And yet, for some baffling reason, you assumed the AC meant "programming jobs that can be done by just plugging in some else's work". Why?
The poster that started this thread said "but to be a GREAT programmer, you need to be able to program things yourself". The AC pointed out that, no, to be a truly great programmer, you should know to reuse other people's work whenever they can. Only when there's no option but to write from scratch does a great programmer bother, because they realize that new code means man-hours writing, man-hours testing, and man-hours fixing bugs, hours that are completely wasted if an existing solution can be used. That's true even in the most advanced of projects (in fact, I'd say even more true... if you're doing truly cutting-edge work, the absolute last place you should be wasting your time is in writing yet-another-linked-list-implementation).
Actually, great programmers avoid shit programming jobs that can be done by just plugging in some else's work and instead prefer ones that demand they think for themselves.
Uhuh.
Sorry buddy, but you will *never* find a programming job that, at least to some degree, doesn't involve wheels someone else has already written (data structures, core algorithms, input and output, all these things are essentially unavoidable, yet you'd be a completely moron to write them yourself unless you have a *very* good reason to do so).
Oh, wait, you're one of those people that believes the very concept of the Windows register is bad, as opposed to it's horrobly broken implementation.
Of course, that's ridiculous. Well, unless you like the idea of configuration littered across myriad non-standard directories, each with their own file format, each poorly documented...
Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually
Works fine for me.
kernel panics from nVidia drivers
Works fine for me.
and the completely non-orthagonal design
Huh? That doesn't even mean anything.
with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system
Good, I like Gnome.
Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart
Works fine for me.
such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work
WTF. Also works just fine for me.
Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation
Then just disable that (on my laptop I don't bother, but I do on my server).
Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?
No. Different people simply have different experiences.
See, just like your content-free post, mine is populated entirely by anecdotes and very little actual data because, in the end, the distro one chooses is based on one's experiences. For example, I find Ubuntu works fantastically on my laptop, provides a nice integrated desktop (provided you change the WM to something more useful, like xmonad), handles closed source drivers really well, handles media wonderfully (the fact that it automatically downloads codecs was a revelation the first time I saw it), and in general *just works*. Yup, upgrading from version to version occasionally results in breakages (Jaunty -> Karmic was easily the worst... prior to that I've had pretty good experiences just upgrading in place, though I tend to re-install these days), but those issues are usually worked out fairly quickly.
Oh, and for the record, I've been using Linux for about 15 years, now, starting with Slackware, which I downloaded from a local BBS onto floppies using the modem-equipped PC at my old school, so I've seen the breadth and depth of Linux distros (not to mention BSD and Windows).
Are you upset because Google was censoring web content, or simply because they were operating in China at all? I ask because being upset because of the latter is just ridiculous. Who cares if Google operates in China, so long as they choose to operate ethically?
AFAIK, Clinton's comments were primarily focused on the cyberattacks conducted against Google, and didn't really attempt to address the censorship or human rights issues.
Schmidt, Larry, and Sergei don't have to listen to a board because they own enough stock that their opinions are the only ones that matter
That's absurd and you know it. Just because you *can* outvote the common stock, doesn't mean they should, as the result could be a shareholder revolt, lawsuits, and god knows what else.
Except, of course, if you actually read *all* of the article, and not just the bits that confirm your beliefs, you'd see this bit:
The contested actions of Henry Ford that led to this decision can also be viewed as a conscious attempt to squeeze out his minority shareholders, especially the Dodge brothers, whom he suspected (correctly) of using their Ford dividends to build a rival car company. By cutting off their dividends, Ford hoped to starve the Dodges of capital to fuel their growth. In that context, the Dodge decision is viewed as a mixed result for both sides of the dispute. Ford was denied the ability to arbitrarily undermine the profitability of the firm, and thereby eliminate future dividends. Under the upheld business judgment rule, however, Ford was given considerable leeway via control of his board about what investments he could make. That left him with considerable influence over dividends, but not as complete control as he wished.
But that sounds a lot less black-and-white, doesn't it?
A corporation's goal is to increase its profits & market shares. Trying to make it pass as some kind of moral authority is at best a marketing trick for image polishing, and at worst utter hypocrisy.
Bullshit. Every corporation has a charter which outlines the goals of the organization. Many of those charters include a "public good" clause, which is why corporations are often large charity contributors (other than the obvious tax benefits).
There is absolutely *nothing* about the "corporation" structure that disallows moral behaviour, and there are many organizations out there that try to be good corporate citizens. Are those organizations in the minority? Maybe, I don't know. But your fundamental supposition that "A corporation's goal is to increase its profits & market share" and that "Trying to make it pass as some kind of moral authority is at best a marketing trick for image polishing" is complete crap.
Ahh, your post was rather misleading, then.:) Your phrase "step in" seemed to imply that the US government would somehow get directly involved in the Google-China spat, and I really don't see that happening.
However, I *do* think there's a good chance that the US will finally point out China's blatant currency manipulation, as momentum for that has been building for some time, both domestically and internationally.
Why did Google initially agree to censor search results in the first place if this was their philosophy?
Because Google isn't a monolithic entity with a singular set of unified values? Instead, it's an organization of individuals, with varying viewpoints, and those individuals will wield different levels of power at different times.
In this particular case, my money is on Schmidt and the board overriding Larry and Sergei on the censorship issue based on the obvious business case of moving into China. Plus, they may have been able to rationalize the move by telling themselves that they might be able to do some good in the country by operating there (many people who criticize Google for threatening to leave China do so based on precisely this principle).
But now that there's an obvious business reason *not* to operate in China (the threat of being hacked by individuals whose actions may or may not have been sanctioned by the government), Larry and Sergei find themselves in the position to steer Google, the organization, in a different direction.
At least, that's my read of the situation. But I'm obviously biased, in that I don't start off with the supposition that Google is a fundamentally evil, heartless, money-grubbing mega-corporation that's willing to do anything for a buck, as so many around here seem to think.
First off, for the love of jesus, do you *really* have to start your sentences in the subject line? Because that's not cool or nifty. It's just plain fucking annoying.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand...
Did Brin remembered he lived in Soviet Union until he was nearly 6 years old only after some guy from China cracked some Gmail accounts?
No, more likely Larry and Sergei were overruled during the initial move into China by Schmidt and the board. Then following the hacks, suddenly they found themselves in a position where they could steer the company in a different direction, as they could provide a legitimate business case why the company shouldn't remain there.
Now we wait to see if the US Government tries to step in...oh what a show this is becoming.
Huh? Why would the US government have any interest, whatsoever, in getting involved in this little spat? I can see absolutely no reason why the US government would do that, and at least one good reason not to: they'd just end up looking like nosy assholes who just can't seem to stay out of other people's business.
Acknowledge that men and women do it the same amount, for the same reasons and like it equally and these daft ideas about a woman's virtue will disappear.
Except, of course, that that's just bullshit.
Look, when it comes to sex, men and women are different, and it isn't somehow bigoted or sexist to say so. It's fucking *evolution*. And the differences in male and female sexual patterns are very well documented, and exist because, in our more primitive primate days, the male and female of the species had different reproductive goals, and therefore different sexual strategies.
Only idiots blinded by a desperate need to be PC would deny this. It's simple biology, and biology doesn't really give a shit about female sexual empowerment.
How can something the AC does not say be "clearly" meant? You're just guessing.
Well, typically, when participating in a conversation, whether online or verbal, one makes use of "context" and "common sense" when attempting to interpret a statement.
In this case, the context is defined by the article. The article is about the ability of a wine drinker to reliably detect a "vintage" bottle of wine as compared to a regular bottle of wine. "Common sense" then strongly suggests that, when the OP said "You think you can taste the difference", he/she meant "detect a 'vintage' bottle of wine as compared to a regular bottle of wine", and not just "Tasting the difference between two wines".
Honestly, does this *really* need to be spelled out for you?
Sure - but you can just as well secure Windows networks further
But that's kinda the point, really. Suppose you could take a box and assign a single value that represented the security rating. Now suppose you took a Windows box and a Linux box and attempted to secure them to some level X. I would argue that the Linux box would require less work and less regular maintenance to achieve that level of security.
So, yes, you can "just as well secure Windows", but as I alluded to in my original post, it takes so much more work, and worse, so much more ongoing maintenance and extreme diligence, that, if the option is viable to you, you might just be better off deploying Linux. And given the original poster of the question was asking about how to keep a Windows system secure, I think "move to Linux if it's doable" is a perfectly valid answer, as it makes building a maintaining a consistently secure system a hell of a lot easier.
Almost everybody thinks reform is needed. Almost nobody thinks that Congress is competent enough to make good reforms.
And therefore government should never ever do anything ever again (unless it involves invading other countries, waging the war on drugs, fighting against abortion, denying gay rights, excising evolution from school curricula, ignoring global warming, or basically doing anything else I happen to agree with).
Yep, most people will say that - even though I had one of my machines broken into years ago - even though it was a linux machine... Even though it *should* have been secure, but I had been somewhat lax in keeping it updated, and hence might have left a potential door open for an attacker due to that, simply by believing linux would have been secure enough.
And still, if you keep your Linux box reasonably updated, and bury it behind a firewall to minimize it's surface exposure to the internets, you'll have a machine that's *far* less likely to be infected or incorporated into a botnet, if only because Windows is the more popular target for infections (since there's just so damn many of them out there).
In short, your analogy doesn't really disprove the idea that a non-Windows solution would improve security. All it does is illustrate that it's not a panacea. And I doubt anyone reasonable would claim it was, as you clearly still have to perform your due diligence. There's just a hell of a lot less diligence you have to do.
It's not that simple in reality. Obviously you can test RTM, service packs, etc, but system files can also be updated in individual security patches. It's simply not feasible to test every single security patch for every single supported system and platform, at least not if you want timely definition updates
An excellent point, and if only a small number of users were affected, it may be relevant. Unfortunately, at least based on the article and the volume of reports, all you need is a run-of-the-mill 64-bit Windows install of some description in order to trigger the issue.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a matter of degree.
And yet, for some baffling reason, you assumed the AC meant "programming jobs that can be done by just plugging in some else's work". Why?
The poster that started this thread said "but to be a GREAT programmer, you need to be able to program things yourself". The AC pointed out that, no, to be a truly great programmer, you should know to reuse other people's work whenever they can. Only when there's no option but to write from scratch does a great programmer bother, because they realize that new code means man-hours writing, man-hours testing, and man-hours fixing bugs, hours that are completely wasted if an existing solution can be used. That's true even in the most advanced of projects (in fact, I'd say even more true... if you're doing truly cutting-edge work, the absolute last place you should be wasting your time is in writing yet-another-linked-list-implementation).
Actually, great programmers avoid shit programming jobs that can be done by just plugging in some else's work and instead prefer ones that demand they think for themselves.
Uhuh.
Sorry buddy, but you will *never* find a programming job that, at least to some degree, doesn't involve wheels someone else has already written (data structures, core algorithms, input and output, all these things are essentially unavoidable, yet you'd be a completely moron to write them yourself unless you have a *very* good reason to do so).
Uhuh... your point being?
Oh, wait, you're one of those people that believes the very concept of the Windows register is bad, as opposed to it's horrobly broken implementation.
Of course, that's ridiculous. Well, unless you like the idea of configuration littered across myriad non-standard directories, each with their own file format, each poorly documented...
Sound (ALSA) dropping out randomly and continually
Works fine for me.
kernel panics from nVidia drivers
Works fine for me.
and the completely non-orthagonal design
Huh? That doesn't even mean anything.
with Gnome being hard-welded to the rest of the system
Good, I like Gnome.
Then there's the horrid mess that is upstart
Works fine for me.
such that even basic things like setting up an fstab for the most part doesn't work
WTF. Also works just fine for me.
Add to that, the "quiet splash," options in GRUB, which remove the ability to debug a faulty installation
Then just disable that (on my laptop I don't bother, but I do on my server).
Are people really so superficial, that a nice shiny Gnome theme (for the first few minutes before the system dies, at least) is the only thing that is considered important?
No. Different people simply have different experiences.
See, just like your content-free post, mine is populated entirely by anecdotes and very little actual data because, in the end, the distro one chooses is based on one's experiences. For example, I find Ubuntu works fantastically on my laptop, provides a nice integrated desktop (provided you change the WM to something more useful, like xmonad), handles closed source drivers really well, handles media wonderfully (the fact that it automatically downloads codecs was a revelation the first time I saw it), and in general *just works*. Yup, upgrading from version to version occasionally results in breakages (Jaunty -> Karmic was easily the worst... prior to that I've had pretty good experiences just upgrading in place, though I tend to re-install these days), but those issues are usually worked out fairly quickly.
Oh, and for the record, I've been using Linux for about 15 years, now, starting with Slackware, which I downloaded from a local BBS onto floppies using the modem-equipped PC at my old school, so I've seen the breadth and depth of Linux distros (not to mention BSD and Windows).
Uhh, the lawyers and individuals involved in the process of incorporating. A corporate charter is a legal document, not a marketing pamphlet.
Well, I guess I stand corrected. :)
You're confused. Being fired for bad behaviour is *not* the same thing as censorship.
Or are you saying companies should keep around foul-mouthed assholes, despite their detrimental effect on the workplace?
Google hasn't actually left mainland China.
Wait, I'm confused.
Are you upset because Google was censoring web content, or simply because they were operating in China at all? I ask because being upset because of the latter is just ridiculous. Who cares if Google operates in China, so long as they choose to operate ethically?
AFAIK, Clinton's comments were primarily focused on the cyberattacks conducted against Google, and didn't really attempt to address the censorship or human rights issues.
Schmidt, Larry, and Sergei don't have to listen to a board because they own enough stock that their opinions are the only ones that matter
That's absurd and you know it. Just because you *can* outvote the common stock, doesn't mean they should, as the result could be a shareholder revolt, lawsuits, and god knows what else.
Except, of course, if you actually read *all* of the article, and not just the bits that confirm your beliefs, you'd see this bit:
But that sounds a lot less black-and-white, doesn't it?
A corporation's goal is to increase its profits & market shares. Trying to make it pass as some kind of moral authority is at best a marketing trick for image polishing, and at worst utter hypocrisy.
Bullshit. Every corporation has a charter which outlines the goals of the organization. Many of those charters include a "public good" clause, which is why corporations are often large charity contributors (other than the obvious tax benefits).
There is absolutely *nothing* about the "corporation" structure that disallows moral behaviour, and there are many organizations out there that try to be good corporate citizens. Are those organizations in the minority? Maybe, I don't know. But your fundamental supposition that "A corporation's goal is to increase its profits & market share" and that "Trying to make it pass as some kind of moral authority is at best a marketing trick for image polishing" is complete crap.
Ahh, your post was rather misleading, then. :) Your phrase "step in" seemed to imply that the US government would somehow get directly involved in the Google-China spat, and I really don't see that happening.
However, I *do* think there's a good chance that the US will finally point out China's blatant currency manipulation, as momentum for that has been building for some time, both domestically and internationally.
Why did Google initially agree to censor search results in the first place if this was their philosophy?
Because Google isn't a monolithic entity with a singular set of unified values? Instead, it's an organization of individuals, with varying viewpoints, and those individuals will wield different levels of power at different times.
In this particular case, my money is on Schmidt and the board overriding Larry and Sergei on the censorship issue based on the obvious business case of moving into China. Plus, they may have been able to rationalize the move by telling themselves that they might be able to do some good in the country by operating there (many people who criticize Google for threatening to leave China do so based on precisely this principle).
But now that there's an obvious business reason *not* to operate in China (the threat of being hacked by individuals whose actions may or may not have been sanctioned by the government), Larry and Sergei find themselves in the position to steer Google, the organization, in a different direction.
At least, that's my read of the situation. But I'm obviously biased, in that I don't start off with the supposition that Google is a fundamentally evil, heartless, money-grubbing mega-corporation that's willing to do anything for a buck, as so many around here seem to think.
First off, for the love of jesus, do you *really* have to start your sentences in the subject line? Because that's not cool or nifty. It's just plain fucking annoying.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand...
Did Brin remembered he lived in Soviet Union until he was nearly 6 years old only after some guy from China cracked some Gmail accounts?
No, more likely Larry and Sergei were overruled during the initial move into China by Schmidt and the board. Then following the hacks, suddenly they found themselves in a position where they could steer the company in a different direction, as they could provide a legitimate business case why the company shouldn't remain there.
Now we wait to see if the US Government tries to step in...oh what a show this is becoming.
Huh? Why would the US government have any interest, whatsoever, in getting involved in this little spat? I can see absolutely no reason why the US government would do that, and at least one good reason not to: they'd just end up looking like nosy assholes who just can't seem to stay out of other people's business.
Acknowledge that men and women do it the same amount, for the same reasons and like it equally and these daft ideas about a woman's virtue will disappear.
Except, of course, that that's just bullshit.
Look, when it comes to sex, men and women are different, and it isn't somehow bigoted or sexist to say so. It's fucking *evolution*. And the differences in male and female sexual patterns are very well documented, and exist because, in our more primitive primate days, the male and female of the species had different reproductive goals, and therefore different sexual strategies.
Only idiots blinded by a desperate need to be PC would deny this. It's simple biology, and biology doesn't really give a shit about female sexual empowerment.
How can something the AC does not say be "clearly" meant? You're just guessing.
Well, typically, when participating in a conversation, whether online or verbal, one makes use of "context" and "common sense" when attempting to interpret a statement.
In this case, the context is defined by the article. The article is about the ability of a wine drinker to reliably detect a "vintage" bottle of wine as compared to a regular bottle of wine. "Common sense" then strongly suggests that, when the OP said "You think you can taste the difference", he/she meant "detect a 'vintage' bottle of wine as compared to a regular bottle of wine", and not just "Tasting the difference between two wines".
Honestly, does this *really* need to be spelled out for you?
Bah, what an idiotic argument. Clearly the OP meant "reliably determining which one is the more expensive one" when he said "tasting the difference".
Well done with the nitpicking, though...
Sure - but you can just as well secure Windows networks further
But that's kinda the point, really. Suppose you could take a box and assign a single value that represented the security rating. Now suppose you took a Windows box and a Linux box and attempted to secure them to some level X. I would argue that the Linux box would require less work and less regular maintenance to achieve that level of security.
So, yes, you can "just as well secure Windows", but as I alluded to in my original post, it takes so much more work, and worse, so much more ongoing maintenance and extreme diligence, that, if the option is viable to you, you might just be better off deploying Linux. And given the original poster of the question was asking about how to keep a Windows system secure, I think "move to Linux if it's doable" is a perfectly valid answer, as it makes building a maintaining a consistently secure system a hell of a lot easier.
Almost everybody thinks reform is needed. Almost nobody thinks that Congress is competent enough to make good reforms.
And therefore government should never ever do anything ever again (unless it involves invading other countries, waging the war on drugs, fighting against abortion, denying gay rights, excising evolution from school curricula, ignoring global warming, or basically doing anything else I happen to agree with).
QED
Ahh, American consumer culture at it's finest. Why continue to use a working piece of equipment when you can buy the latest shiny!
Since when did the right to self-determination, freedom of expression and thought, freedom to not be oppressed by a fascist state, become wrong?
Huh? Those aren't exclusively US values, buddy. Though it's amusingly very American to claim ownership of those ideas...
No, "American culture" is generally considered fun stuff like: Consumerism. Corporatism. Obsession with money and violence. Fear of sex and drugs.
You know, the real America, not the fictious one that conservatives and libertarians wished existed, but actually doesn't.
Yep, most people will say that - even though I had one of my machines broken into years ago - even though it was a linux machine... Even though it *should* have been secure, but I had been somewhat lax in keeping it updated, and hence might have left a potential door open for an attacker due to that, simply by believing linux would have been secure enough.
And still, if you keep your Linux box reasonably updated, and bury it behind a firewall to minimize it's surface exposure to the internets, you'll have a machine that's *far* less likely to be infected or incorporated into a botnet, if only because Windows is the more popular target for infections (since there's just so damn many of them out there).
In short, your analogy doesn't really disprove the idea that a non-Windows solution would improve security. All it does is illustrate that it's not a panacea. And I doubt anyone reasonable would claim it was, as you clearly still have to perform your due diligence. There's just a hell of a lot less diligence you have to do.
It's not that simple in reality. Obviously you can test RTM, service packs, etc, but system files can also be updated in individual security patches. It's simply not feasible to test every single security patch for every single supported system and platform, at least not if you want timely definition updates
An excellent point, and if only a small number of users were affected, it may be relevant. Unfortunately, at least based on the article and the volume of reports, all you need is a run-of-the-mill 64-bit Windows install of some description in order to trigger the issue.