surely a country's government has the right to snoop on its own shores. china already does it. eventually all supposedly "modernised" countries will get the jist. anyone THAT concerned with privacy needs to look at what they are doing on the net, and look at why they don't do similar things in society (ie compare watching internet porn to hiring a porn movie from a movie rental store). if you don't like the idea of the government finding out about your porn habits, you would be complaining about the same loss of privacy that prevents you from hiring a porn film from a rental store (or maybe its the prospect of your neighbors finding out about your porn habits)... in any case, policing the internet has no more privacy issues than policing the rest of society
if a governmnt gets caught snooping traffic with a foreign destination, i guess there's going to have to be some kind of international agreement otherwise every case may be deemed an act of war (most extreme cases involving downloads of justin bieber songs, which may be considered weapons of cochleae destruction)
the same could be said about anyone's reaction to drunk drivers... don't drive a car, or maybe about the threat of street violence... don't go out on the streets; maybe your solution to the problem of the raping of women is to banish all women
microsoft touts every new operating system they release as having "faster boot times", but i still remember turning on my i7,16Gb win7 workstation and then my old toshiba tecra a2 notebook with debian lenny, virtual box and windows xp pro, and i was able to login to my gnome2 desktop, start vbox and windows xp almost booted to a usable desktop before the win7 machine was up and ready to use... i expect windows 8 will be slower to boot than windows 7, even with windows 7 on an older machine. i don't care if the w8 previews were quick to boot, they were previews, designed to sucker people in (and failing miserably, but not intentionally i'm sure).
i think there are more zero day exploits that have plagued win7 than you give credit for, and while win8 will no doubt have some new security features, it will also introduce a host of new loopholes to be taken advantage of
and regarding the move away from "everyone is an admin" in winxp, the only improvement in vista and win7 was click-through privelige escalation that users never even read let alone give consideration to. if a user wants to install a program that contains hidden malware, of course they aren't going to realise they are installing hidden malware, so to get the program they want installed of course they are going to offer it admin priveliges. maybe not a problem for plebs without install permissions, but do you really think a sysadmin is going to know any better? unless the program is called "ProgramNeededForWork_with_freeporn.exe".. a virus scanner may help, but it just as likely won't
the real protection that linux offers is that all system files are protected by default in a proper multi-user filesystem. i know windows has something like this (ACLs), but it appears to be set up weak by default such that even if the system could work its like a toothless guard dog if not set up properly. from what i've seen ACLs are horrendessly overcomplicated for what they actually achieve and require navigation through dialog box hell. if microsoft really wants to corner the server market, they need to bring back good ol' MS-DOS with a few enhancements and get away from all the rediculous dialogs.
on another note, i wonder if the network mapping bug in win7 is fixed in win8? at work we eventually resorted to creating a directory full of shortcuts to other machines because the proper network folder was so unreliable
i tried gnome3, which i didn't much like, so i went back to gnome2 and will continue to use it till gnome3 gets better and more stable (which it no doubt will)
if you don't like unity but continue to use it (and whinge) you're a moron. you have the most options with linux and you're thinking like a windows user
Spoken like a true tech support guy who thinks because he knows how to install windows systems he is the be all know all of business systems
spoken like a true moron
Y2K was mass hysteria driven by FUD from the IT industry to sell hardware and software upgrades
Y2K wasn't about the desktop. It was about business systems
actually if you want to get technical it was mainly about military and industrial (ie power grid management) type systems, and i'm sure the actual problems weren't as dire as predicted and likely fixed even before the hysteria broke out, but implications to financial systems and home loans etc were no doubt important too
thre's also the Y2038 bug in unix timestamps which reared its ugly head in some 30 year home loan forecasts from 2008. no doubt by 2038 the Y2038 problem will be no more a problem, unless of course the IT world hypes it up to make more FUD money per Y2K
i'm gunna vote for the first candidate to don a darth vader costume for the rest of his life, and to change the form of government to a galactic empire. of course i don't give a shit about the old guy with the self-inflicted wrinkly face
You can't do any kind of taxes with Excel spreadsheets
actually that's full of shit... even with complexities such as gst and payg it is possible to run your finances with a spreadsheet, and in doing so you generally learn more about taxation than you would if you use a proprietary closed system like quickbooks. ok many people don't want to know about tax, but if you're serious about becoming successful, learning tax is an essential part of your business development.
printing receipts also isn't rocket science... the minimum requirements for receipts and invoices (or tax invoices where gst is concerned in australia) aren't overly complicated, and the tax office isn't going to ream you a new one if your receipts don't look exactly like those printed from quickbooks. as far as the tax office is concerned, you can actually run a legitimate business with handwritten invoices (although i wouldn't recommend it).
from lwn.net, ledger https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki seems like a decent package, but i also like the idea of small businesses putting forward their requests to a common forum so that one or more open source programmers can take up the challenge with a little insight
its probably good that your ship didn't dock at Pearl Harbor, as they may have got snagged on all the wrecks from the mighty sunken navy that was brought down by a few japanese fighter planes... i guess size doesn't always matter
praising open source or non-profit projects isn't really trolling. if he were praising a corporation or a product of a corporation, then it would be considered trolling.
if its non-profit, he could only be praising it if he genuinely likes it, because there's no money in it otherwise
having said that, this is slashdot, and there are as many anti-trolling trolls as there are spelling and grammar trolls. some people just need to get out more
gnome 3 is quite nice too, despite a few bugs and missing features last time i used it (i'm still with gnome 2 on debian squeeze testing).
you would think with all its resources that microsoft would be capable of something better than metro for windows 8.
the more i think about it, their metro desktop seems like a lame attempt at trying to force the world to use metro on OEM PCs and laptops so that they'll get used to it and smartphones with windows phone OS might not suck so much (relative to android/ios).
why would they risk a global desktop and laptop OS domination to sell a few measly phones?
consumers are a fickle bunch... if you piss them off enough they'll abandon you purely out of spite, which is possibly partly why many new microsoft products (outside the captive markets of windows and office) have flopped.
windows is still successful not because it is a good product, but because many businesses and consumers simply feel they have no other choice, but i think when windows 8 comes along in a couple of months, consumers may look around a bit more.
microsoft bashing aside... i think as long as debian is the grandaddy... ubuntu, mint, etc will share a common community. variety is the spice of life
html/php/css/js works good for me. it suits the agile methodology, and if a colleague finds a bug or needs a feature, i can fix, test and publish in a few minutes and my colleague just hits a button on the app and the fix is implemented without him even having to reload his data files. it can get a bit funky when you get into outputting js within html from php, but that's why there's two different string delimiters:)
skype is closed source anyway, so i don't see why microsoft using their own "standard" for skype talking to skype should be any more of a problem than if i develop a little chat program in delphi that uses its own protocol on top of tcp/ip sockets.
why would microsoft want skype to talk to any other software other than skype?
Slashdot Mirror
surely a country's government has the right to snoop on its own shores. china already does it. eventually all supposedly "modernised" countries will get the jist. anyone THAT concerned with privacy needs to look at what they are doing on the net, and look at why they don't do similar things in society (ie compare watching internet porn to hiring a porn movie from a movie rental store). if you don't like the idea of the government finding out about your porn habits, you would be complaining about the same loss of privacy that prevents you from hiring a porn film from a rental store (or maybe its the prospect of your neighbors finding out about your porn habits)... in any case, policing the internet has no more privacy issues than policing the rest of society
if a governmnt gets caught snooping traffic with a foreign destination, i guess there's going to have to be some kind of international agreement otherwise every case may be deemed an act of war (most extreme cases involving downloads of justin bieber songs, which may be considered weapons of cochleae destruction)
the same could be said about anyone's reaction to drunk drivers... don't drive a car, or maybe about the threat of street violence... don't go out on the streets; maybe your solution to the problem of the raping of women is to banish all women
microsoft touts every new operating system they release as having "faster boot times", but i still remember turning on my i7,16Gb win7 workstation and then my old toshiba tecra a2 notebook with debian lenny, virtual box and windows xp pro, and i was able to login to my gnome2 desktop, start vbox and windows xp almost booted to a usable desktop before the win7 machine was up and ready to use... i expect windows 8 will be slower to boot than windows 7, even with windows 7 on an older machine. i don't care if the w8 previews were quick to boot, they were previews, designed to sucker people in (and failing miserably, but not intentionally i'm sure).
i think there are more zero day exploits that have plagued win7 than you give credit for, and while win8 will no doubt have some new security features, it will also introduce a host of new loopholes to be taken advantage of
and regarding the move away from "everyone is an admin" in winxp, the only improvement in vista and win7 was click-through privelige escalation that users never even read let alone give consideration to. if a user wants to install a program that contains hidden malware, of course they aren't going to realise they are installing hidden malware, so to get the program they want installed of course they are going to offer it admin priveliges. maybe not a problem for plebs without install permissions, but do you really think a sysadmin is going to know any better? unless the program is called "ProgramNeededForWork_with_freeporn.exe".. a virus scanner may help, but it just as likely won't
the real protection that linux offers is that all system files are protected by default in a proper multi-user filesystem. i know windows has something like this (ACLs), but it appears to be set up weak by default such that even if the system could work its like a toothless guard dog if not set up properly. from what i've seen ACLs are horrendessly overcomplicated for what they actually achieve and require navigation through dialog box hell. if microsoft really wants to corner the server market, they need to bring back good ol' MS-DOS with a few enhancements and get away from all the rediculous dialogs.
on another note, i wonder if the network mapping bug in win7 is fixed in win8? at work we eventually resorted to creating a directory full of shortcuts to other machines because the proper network folder was so unreliable
makes me reconsider my loyalty to Ubuntu
are you stupid?
i tried gnome3, which i didn't much like, so i went back to gnome2 and will continue to use it till gnome3 gets better and more stable (which it no doubt will)
if you don't like unity but continue to use it (and whinge) you're a moron. you have the most options with linux and you're thinking like a windows user
Spoken like a true tech support guy who thinks because he knows how to install windows systems he is the be all know all of business systems
spoken like a true moron
Y2K was mass hysteria driven by FUD from the IT industry to sell hardware and software upgrades
Y2K wasn't about the desktop. It was about business systems
actually if you want to get technical it was mainly about military and industrial (ie power grid management) type systems, and i'm sure the actual problems weren't as dire as predicted and likely fixed even before the hysteria broke out, but implications to financial systems and home loans etc were no doubt important too
thre's also the Y2038 bug in unix timestamps which reared its ugly head in some 30 year home loan forecasts from 2008. no doubt by 2038 the Y2038 problem will be no more a problem, unless of course the IT world hypes it up to make more FUD money per Y2K
Let Hairy help ya pal
that's just creepy
i'm gunna vote for the first candidate to don a darth vader costume for the rest of his life, and to change the form of government to a galactic empire. of course i don't give a shit about the old guy with the self-inflicted wrinkly face
It is not hard to understand why black men prefer white women
duh! white chicks have bigger mouths and give better head
"quaint"... how 19th century
You can't do any kind of taxes with Excel spreadsheets
actually that's full of shit... even with complexities such as gst and payg it is possible to run your finances with a spreadsheet, and in doing so you generally learn more about taxation than you would if you use a proprietary closed system like quickbooks. ok many people don't want to know about tax, but if you're serious about becoming successful, learning tax is an essential part of your business development.
printing receipts also isn't rocket science... the minimum requirements for receipts and invoices (or tax invoices where gst is concerned in australia) aren't overly complicated, and the tax office isn't going to ream you a new one if your receipts don't look exactly like those printed from quickbooks. as far as the tax office is concerned, you can actually run a legitimate business with handwritten invoices (although i wouldn't recommend it).
from lwn.net, ledger https://github.com/jwiegley/ledger/wiki seems like a decent package, but i also like the idea of small businesses putting forward their requests to a common forum so that one or more open source programmers can take up the challenge with a little insight
maybe the floating islands are his shoes... screw the gourd... follow the shoe!!!
what did you expect? slashdot doesn't come up with any of its own unique stories... unless they involve microsoft or apple bashing
there's always the RAAF :)
its probably good that your ship didn't dock at Pearl Harbor, as they may have got snagged on all the wrecks from the mighty sunken navy that was brought down by a few japanese fighter planes... i guess size doesn't always matter
...soon to be the only operating systems usable with a keyboard?
...particularly involving dynamic systems or electricity... calculus, partial fractions, laplace/fourier transforms, etc are a must
...manager
:)
i could designate work to others all day from home in bed with just a cordless phone, while my wife is in the cowgirl position
a good manager would be a little different
praising open source or non-profit projects isn't really trolling. if he were praising a corporation or a product of a corporation, then it would be considered trolling.
if its non-profit, he could only be praising it if he genuinely likes it, because there's no money in it otherwise
having said that, this is slashdot, and there are as many anti-trolling trolls as there are spelling and grammar trolls. some people just need to get out more
gnome 3 is quite nice too, despite a few bugs and missing features last time i used it (i'm still with gnome 2 on debian squeeze testing).
you would think with all its resources that microsoft would be capable of something better than metro for windows 8.
the more i think about it, their metro desktop seems like a lame attempt at trying to force the world to use metro on OEM PCs and laptops so that they'll get used to it and smartphones with windows phone OS might not suck so much (relative to android/ios).
why would they risk a global desktop and laptop OS domination to sell a few measly phones?
consumers are a fickle bunch... if you piss them off enough they'll abandon you purely out of spite, which is possibly partly why many new microsoft products (outside the captive markets of windows and office) have flopped.
windows is still successful not because it is a good product, but because many businesses and consumers simply feel they have no other choice, but i think when windows 8 comes along in a couple of months, consumers may look around a bit more.
microsoft bashing aside... i think as long as debian is the grandaddy... ubuntu, mint, etc will share a common community. variety is the spice of life
i very much doubt that firefox or chrome will ever be able to skype without some sort of plugin.... anything could happen with IE I guess
maybe its because nobody uses "indeed" in a sentence any more either, so yeah it "whooshed" me..... next
html/php/css/js works good for me. it suits the agile methodology, and if a colleague finds a bug or needs a feature, i can fix, test and publish in a few minutes and my colleague just hits a button on the app and the fix is implemented without him even having to reload his data files. it can get a bit funky when you get into outputting js within html from php, but that's why there's two different string delimiters :)
you're probably just doing it wrong
silverlight is stillborn. get with the times. silverlight will become popular when i become the slashdot webmaster.
skype is closed source anyway, so i don't see why microsoft using their own "standard" for skype talking to skype should be any more of a problem than if i develop a little chat program in delphi that uses its own protocol on top of tcp/ip sockets.
why would microsoft want skype to talk to any other software other than skype?