Correction: Since then, we've done a lot of important and useful work instead of wasting time on spectacular Cold War PR missions.
NASA has achieved a lot more every year since then than they did on the Apollo missions. Sorry if it wasn't sexy enough for you, but the real work rarely is...
Kind of a false dichotomy. Unsexy grunt-work is useful, certainly but imagine where we would be if we weren't busy blowing huge budgets on blowing up brown people.
Seriously, if we could just declare war on Alpha Centauri, that'd be cool. And useful.
My point is that for a brief time wartime budget was spent on space exploration and we made huge headway. I understand the low-hanging fruit has been picked, but really, we should be spending our money better. We just need North Korea to successfully colonize a moon around Jupiter and suddenly you'll see the Western world develop warp drives and phasers and all kinds of neat toys to send out there to blow up that colony.
With any luck, some weightier opposition MPs will make sure that the Conservatives get to wear this when appropriate. I remember when the bill was last before parliament and one of the opposition parties tried to broaden the media levy. The government response was that it "wouldn't work", but now it looks like the real writer of the bill was Obama (countersigned by Disney), so there was no real hope for change.
Sure. But my point is that when the opposition says "the Conservative government did this" and describes the issue, the majority of the voting populace will hear "the PCs did something you don't understand or care about." Meanwhile the PCs will be saying "the opposition wants everything in your wallet, and the wallet itself. They're evil and greedy and not at all like us."
These cable leaks will effectively neuter the Conservatives for the next four years, since their entire policy is based on sucking American cock.
Are you kidding me? There are three types of us; those who know what's going on and act on that knowledge (a.k.a. politicians), those who know what's going on and don't act on that knowledge (you and I), and the vast, vast majority that don't read about any of this and wouldn't understand or care if they did.
All the politicians need to do is keep smearing each other with "they tax you too much" and "they are killing our health care/education/whatever" and "he's a pedophile". Nobody brings real issues into campaigning because the majority of constituents don't understand real issues not because they're stupid but because they don't want to.
That! is really annoying. What is up with people and their This! Am I really getting that old? Is it too much to ask to actually write a few more words? And is This! the reason one feels the need to post as AC?
It's nothing new. It's just the latest evolution of the same reality we've had for ages.
Don't know what I'm talking about?
When was the last time you saw a post containing nothing but "me too"?
Oh yeahhhhh. Look, sometimes people feel the pressure to make their opinion heard only they don't have a unique opinion. They have a "me too" opinion. Better they post "me too", "this", or the latest "+1" mini-post than re-write the parent comment. That way we don't have to actually read the same comment over and over again slightly reworded.
can't stand that shit. this. this this this.... fucking annoying.
Could be worse; it could be "me too". Or "+1".
Understand you live in an era where people have a historically unprecedented ability to express their opinions that nobody gives a fuck about. Why don't you do like the rest of us and just ignore everyone else?
Y'know, people need to just learn to turn off their brains once in a while.
Agreed. Art is a wide spectrum and Cowboys & Aliens firmly fits within that somewhere. Sure it's not Inception or Matrix but it doesn't try to be. Instead it's a new telling of a classic western story with the twist that the antagonists aren't from around these parts.
It succeeds rather nicely in that both Harrison Ford's and Daniel Craig's delivery fits their roles superbly. They're fun to watch in the context that they're portraying the typical Dirty Harry style gruff western guy.
I didn't go to this expecting or even wanting something it couldn't deliver. I was pleasantly surprised that once the aliens were revealed they were generally shown completely, in broad daylight. No flash-editing and blurred CGI or overly dark shadowy movement. No, for once in a sci-fi movie we got to see what was eating us. The story was linear, coherent, and clean. Contrast that to Transformers 2 and 3 (for instance) which were random kitchen-sink mashups of truly bullshit motivations.
My point is simply that if you go to see something like say... Jurassic Park expecting high-brow cinema there's something wrong with you. Go expecting to see a movie wherein scientists recreate dinosaurs which then eat them. As long as the execution of the story is good - which in the case of Cowboys & Aliens it was - it's a success.
Finally, aside from the good movie vs bad movie discussion I'd like to add that the comments about Harrison Ford's contribution sound like a lot of the folks leaving the comments evidently saw a different movie from the one I did... as in... they didn't see this one. His role is pretty much non-physical aside from one or two punches and shooting a gun here and there. There really wasn't much room for age to come into the (motion) picture. So I'm sorry, but that criticism is pretty much inflated way out of perspective.
Why do I need an addon in order to work around Mozilla's decision to change their versioning scheme so it breaks their addon compatibility checking?
They invented the version checking. They broke it for marketing purposes. They should fix it by deprecating the version-checking or update how it works to be meaningful in the context of their latest feature, AwesomeVer.
This isn't about what I can do or can't do, or understand. It's about what's dumb. Having a browser that invalidates addons every couple months... dumb.
If only there were a dozen or so other ways to transfer potentially harmful data that coincidentally require user intervention.
E-mail is fine for passive data, but it's too easy for executables. Users should have to jump through some hoops when handling executables, just like chemists have to take extra precautions when handling unknown or potentially hazardous substances. Handling protocol requires you to slow down and treat the material differently. Sounds good to me.
If your users can't handle FTP, or any of the myriad web file transfer systems, perhaps the answer isn't leaving hydrochloric acid in a Pepsi can on their desk. Don't dumb down the process... smart up the users.
From the looks of the front page, at least, they're in the VoIP market. How is that related to Apple's iCloud?
Because if you click on the link in the upper right-hand corner labeled "Data Center Web Site" you discover they offer a whole lot more than VoIP. From within that area:
"Founded in 1985, iCloud Communications is an established business run by a seasoned management team. We've built a distinguished track record in network technologies and infrastructure operations. Our data center solutions provide a range of colocation, hosting and technical support services to telephony service provider and small-to-mid-sized enterprise customers."
Now I find it illuminating. It seems that too much effort is spent making Javascript animated menus and Flash sliding widgets and not enough effort is spent on patches, updates, and decent password policy. Corporate culture prioritizes pretty pictures to sell us more shit we don't need. Meanwhile our personal information - and therefore capacity to buy said shit - is in danger of being leaked.
From Sony to PBS and HBGary in between, too many companies are Doing It Wrong.
For every small task that i want to accomplish, i seem to need to pony up. Every small time programmer tries to make a buck with his little program. Nothing wrong with that, but where are the Free/Libre alternatives?
I hear your pain. I believe there's something philosophically wrong about the software ecosystem's shape these days. I stumbled upon an announcement for a Blackberry release for a "app" that literally doesn't do anything. Its sole purpose is to have no icon, so you can install it and move it on your home screen to create a gap in your icons. It comes in three versions; 4 non-icons, 12 non-icons and 24 non-icons. Something like $2.99 then $3.99 then $4.99 respectively.
I understand capitalism. I understand the desire to extract maximum monetary benefit from least labour incurred. What I don't understand is how the author of the "app" in question doesn't off himself in shame for asking for money in the first place. This isn't a matter of "the market will establish fair value" and the author will get the message when there are zero sales. It's like offering someone a bottle of air, for profit. It's... sleazy.
In conclusion, I blame the Apple ecosystem especially. In the day of Palm PDAs and their ilk, most software was free, and that which wasn't went far beyond today's "app" doo-dad. Paid software was feature-rich. The advent of the iPhone and iTunes' has convinced micro-devs that their latest turd is worth a buck. And now that mentality is spreading to other mobile devices and even desktop platforms.
No, MS Update is nothing like the Ubuntu Software center (or the software repositories on other distros). You cannot get software from Windows Update.
When you say "cannot", do you mean can? Admittedly the list is very small by current design, but Microsoft Security Essentials is available for distribution via Microsoft Update. So is Silverlight, equivalent to Adobe Flash. So are the various.NET libraries, equivalent to Java.
But really, let's return to the original point. Typical malware infections aren't about the user trying to get their hands on some software. They're about compromised web sites serving up content that looks remarkably like legitimate OS security interfaces which then tell they user they're infected, and telling them where to click to perform a security scan. The user clicks, the user infects the PC. Much of this doesn't rely on OS or browser vulnerabilities, though they may be exploited as well as the social engineering.
The original comment I replied to told users "two simple things"; click the updates button when updates happen and don't download anything. My point remains that getting users to understand and abide by those rules isn't any more practical on a non-Windows platform than it is a Windows platform. "You told me update when it says update, so I figured scan when it says scan is the same thing." That's what you'll get. By definition with social engineering the user is vulnerability. Changing time zone, clothing style, or operating system won't change that.
This is why the only solution is a GNU/Linux solution. You tell people two simple things. Click the update button when the updates happen and don't download ANYTHING. If you want a program click the Ubuntu Software center and search for it. Everything else is going to potentially infect you.
That's cute, but if users were inclined to obey exactly those instructions, Windows would be fine.
The question being asked wasn't "should I get rid of all of the fun stuff I use every day that's sitting in my entertainment room?" Instead it was "can I throw out my unused crap that's all in storage, neglected?"
All that stuff about emulators is just a smokescreen. You're not playing your legacy DOS stuff now, you won't tomorrow, and the day after that you'll be dead. It's a real trick to recognize when you're saving stuff because you have sentimental value attached to the memories, not the stuff itself.
No, of course not. Your cell provider already sends you alerts that you're not being charged for; why would this be any different?
The difference is that the texts they don't charge you for are about them selling you shit you don't want and these texts aren't. Also known as: one is a profit-stream and the other isn't.
He shouldn't've ("should not have" or "shouldn't have") told.
I've used compound contractions like that decades now. My favorite is... it'sn't for "it is not". They're fun in sentences. "If he spends his money today, he won't've enough left to pay the bills later." Couldn't've, shouldn't've, wouldn't've... those are just the simple ones everyone uses, even if they won't admit it. It takes a real pioneer to use doesn't've.
Not that I wouldn't like to see more work on manned spaceflight mind you, but I think you're overestimating the amount of infrastructure needed for this kind of work.
Really? I'd love to think that was true, but I don't think it is.
See, here in 2011 we've got these neat pressures that didn't apply when we were working on the moon landing. Things like safety standards. It's not acceptable if one in a hundred launches or one in two hundred launches ends in a fireball. Not to the taxpaying public it isn't. Back then we were happy with one in ten.
Basically, expect modern spacecraft to be required to be handicap accessible, kosher, non-allergenic, and shaped such that they're not phallic.
What I'm saying is that modern spacecraft are likely hugely over-engineered compared to the primitive ones we used decades ago. While our materials science has improved I suspect that the politics have degraded significantly, creating a much higher bar for entry.
Why would you want it to float away from the wreckage?
So then it can use GPS?
Honest question... why do you want the Flight Data Recorder to use GPS? It knows perfectly well where it is. It's us that don't know where it is. My understanding is that in GPS, it's the satellites that do the transmitting.
Regardless, KISS seriously applies here. A FDR is intended to be massively robust not feature-laden. And so it should be. Less variables in locating it is a Good Thing. Recovery specialists don't need to wonder "did it float away and the transmitter failed or is it laying on the ocean floor because the balloon didn't inflate?" While recovery in wreckage at the ocean-bottom is difficult, it's simple in the sense of having relatively few variables involved.
What I wouldn't mind seeing is a set of a half-dozen recorders scattered throughout an aircraft. You know... redundancy.
Microsoft says Give us more money to fix the bugs in Windows 7. It's called Windows 8.
Not a popular question I know, but I've got to ask... what are these bugs in Win7 that you've encountered that need fixing? Seriously. No, don't go searching for something. Tell me what part of Win7 that you have ever tried to use has failed you due to bug. Not design critique. Bug.
Be real. Given the massive feature set of the OS and how many lines of code there are in it, the thing is very, very reasonable quality-wise.
Usually if only IE is supported, it is IE6. And even IE7 is not IE6-compatible.
Might as well reply though the discussion is long dead. We've found a lot of "portal" sites in the insurance industry that really, "support" is a word only. Firefox and the like probably work, but the insurance carriers or business partners simply won't endorse anything but IE. They often don't specify a version. Also, we can seemingly always get away with IE7 or IE8 in compatibility mode.
It isn't the end of the world that I can't get the next IE wedged on existing Terminal Servers, but the point remains that the life cycle for Server 2008 is absurdly short, purely because it's on the Vista kernel while R2 is on the Win7 kernel. Microsoft has been making decisions recently regarding support based on desktop OS that has impact on servers. Remote Desktop Client 7 works on WinXP SP3 but won't install on Server 2003 Just Because. Amusingly I regularly hack it in (it's only an EXE a couple DLLs and a few support files) and it works fine (excepting CredsSP support). MS arbitrarily decided that though Server 2003 is newer, demand for RDC 7 wasn't worth configuring the MSI so it could install on it. Thanks. Here we are again only with IE, on a five year newer server platform.
I get it. Nobody runs Vista, so nothing of value was lost. On the other hand, the new features for RDS in Server 2008 are huge, which prompted mass movement off Server 2003 to Server 2008. This sucks.
There's an implication beyond "Vista support is dropped", which considering the number of companies that avoided Vista on the desktop itself isn't a big deal... Server 2008 support is also dropped. R2 is the Win7 kernel so that's still valid, but my users on Terminal Servers as little as three years old won't have access to the next IE version.
Think beyond your desktop and consider that much of the corporate ecosystem "supports" IE. I've got clients who need - through no choice of their own - to access partner sites that are only officially supported on IE. For many of them, alternative browsers aren't something I can recommend, sadly. Now we're also being told our future with IE is... "OS upgrades".
Thanks Microsoft. Dropping XP is understandable. Vista/2k8 is too soon.
How about an additional answer: consider well what data you carry on a mobile device.
I have serious difficulty figuring out what scenario was in play that required this particular data to be on a laptop in the first place. Some mobile sales guy needed the data to plug in at a hotel conference room and make a presentation? Some jet-setting bigwig needed to massage the data and do some data-mining while on a trans-oceanic flight?
Even if the laptop's user was tasked with "visit each of these people individually and tell them 'no' in plain English", the data should have been partial and redacted.
Sorry, but corporations - like the human beings they're comprised of - put data on theft-prone devices that shouldn't be there in the first place. Encrypted or not.
im sorry, I did not realize I was on the association of anal retentive english majors page, its just a forum post don't go killing yourself over it
ok so here is why, even though my post was atrocious by professor tightass standards, you still understood it, when one quotes the entire parent for zero reason it makes it harder to filter garbage from comment, cause you see, all the comments are squashed down so only the first line is shown.
but hey if you want all your comments to look like someone is a retarded parrot then whatever, its just a pet peeve, please dont piss your pants
Relax. You're wrong. Get used to it. First up, if you're going to inform someone "you're doing it wrong", it behooves you to do it correctly. If you fail, the consequence is minor; ridicule. So don't get so defensive (and offensive at the same time); you screwed up while criticizing someone. You're fair game.
Second, as to your original complaint, you're still wrong. I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's users, but I suspect at least some behave as I do. I sometimes deliberately read comments nested two or three deep into a thread. Sometimes it's because I'm intrigued by a couple words that make it into the single-line summary. Having the parent quoted is convenient for me. It saves me having to expand the parent then scroll back down simply to gain the context that I could have had were it quoted in the first place. Simply put, by quoting the parent a post becomes self-contained and meaning-complete. Without quoting it is referential and fragmentary. It is easier to ignore data that is present than it is to obtain information that is not. Philosophically-speaking, parent-quoting is a superior practice.
Thirdly, for my own amusement, I'd like to inform you that it doesn't require an "anal-retentive english (sic) major" to appreciate or produce grammatically correct writing. I'm entirely sure that my post has plenty that a professional could point out as flawed yet I still strive for a higher level of correctness than you can be bothered to. There's one. People who obviously don't even try to be accurate convey an air of laziness. As well, there's an underlying message: "my words are untidy and so too is my mind." Right or wrong, whenever you can't be bothered to capitalize letters, use apostrophes, punctuate, and generally ill-express yourself, you're asking to not be taken seriously. Why bother writing at all if you're not trying to be heard?
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Correction: Since then, we've done a lot of important and useful work instead of wasting time on spectacular Cold War PR missions.
NASA has achieved a lot more every year since then than they did on the Apollo missions. Sorry if it wasn't sexy enough for you, but the real work rarely is...
Kind of a false dichotomy. Unsexy grunt-work is useful, certainly but imagine where we would be if we weren't busy blowing huge budgets on blowing up brown people.
Seriously, if we could just declare war on Alpha Centauri, that'd be cool. And useful.
My point is that for a brief time wartime budget was spent on space exploration and we made huge headway. I understand the low-hanging fruit has been picked, but really, we should be spending our money better. We just need North Korea to successfully colonize a moon around Jupiter and suddenly you'll see the Western world develop warp drives and phasers and all kinds of neat toys to send out there to blow up that colony.
It's a fine, not beating. Gum is illegal according to laws anyway (and don't start about it. Their country, their laws).
Gee, I thought gun-control laws were contentious enough... now gum-control laws?
With any luck, some weightier opposition MPs will make sure that the Conservatives get to wear this when appropriate. I remember when the bill was last before parliament and one of the opposition parties tried to broaden the media levy. The government response was that it "wouldn't work", but now it looks like the real writer of the bill was Obama (countersigned by Disney), so there was no real hope for change.
Sure. But my point is that when the opposition says "the Conservative government did this" and describes the issue, the majority of the voting populace will hear "the PCs did something you don't understand or care about." Meanwhile the PCs will be saying "the opposition wants everything in your wallet, and the wallet itself. They're evil and greedy and not at all like us."
These cable leaks will effectively neuter the Conservatives for the next four years, since their entire policy is based on sucking American cock.
Are you kidding me? There are three types of us; those who know what's going on and act on that knowledge (a.k.a. politicians), those who know what's going on and don't act on that knowledge (you and I), and the vast, vast majority that don't read about any of this and wouldn't understand or care if they did.
All the politicians need to do is keep smearing each other with "they tax you too much" and "they are killing our health care/education/whatever" and "he's a pedophile". Nobody brings real issues into campaigning because the majority of constituents don't understand real issues not because they're stupid but because they don't want to.
That! is really annoying. What is up with people and their This! Am I really getting that old? Is it too much to ask to actually write a few more words? And is This! the reason one feels the need to post as AC?
It's nothing new. It's just the latest evolution of the same reality we've had for ages.
Don't know what I'm talking about?
When was the last time you saw a post containing nothing but "me too"?
Oh yeahhhhh. Look, sometimes people feel the pressure to make their opinion heard only they don't have a unique opinion. They have a "me too" opinion. Better they post "me too", "this", or the latest "+1" mini-post than re-write the parent comment. That way we don't have to actually read the same comment over and over again slightly reworded.
Let it go.
fuck you and fuck "this!!!"
can't stand that shit. this. this this this.... fucking annoying.
Could be worse; it could be "me too". Or "+1".
Understand you live in an era where people have a historically unprecedented ability to express their opinions that nobody gives a fuck about. Why don't you do like the rest of us and just ignore everyone else?
Y'know, people need to just learn to turn off their brains once in a while.
Agreed. Art is a wide spectrum and Cowboys & Aliens firmly fits within that somewhere. Sure it's not Inception or Matrix but it doesn't try to be. Instead it's a new telling of a classic western story with the twist that the antagonists aren't from around these parts.
It succeeds rather nicely in that both Harrison Ford's and Daniel Craig's delivery fits their roles superbly. They're fun to watch in the context that they're portraying the typical Dirty Harry style gruff western guy.
I didn't go to this expecting or even wanting something it couldn't deliver. I was pleasantly surprised that once the aliens were revealed they were generally shown completely, in broad daylight. No flash-editing and blurred CGI or overly dark shadowy movement. No, for once in a sci-fi movie we got to see what was eating us. The story was linear, coherent, and clean. Contrast that to Transformers 2 and 3 (for instance) which were random kitchen-sink mashups of truly bullshit motivations.
My point is simply that if you go to see something like say... Jurassic Park expecting high-brow cinema there's something wrong with you. Go expecting to see a movie wherein scientists recreate dinosaurs which then eat them. As long as the execution of the story is good - which in the case of Cowboys & Aliens it was - it's a success.
Finally, aside from the good movie vs bad movie discussion I'd like to add that the comments about Harrison Ford's contribution sound like a lot of the folks leaving the comments evidently saw a different movie from the one I did... as in... they didn't see this one. His role is pretty much non-physical aside from one or two punches and shooting a gun here and there. There really wasn't much room for age to come into the (motion) picture. So I'm sorry, but that criticism is pretty much inflated way out of perspective.
Why do I need an addon in order to work around Mozilla's decision to change their versioning scheme so it breaks their addon compatibility checking?
They invented the version checking. They broke it for marketing purposes. They should fix it by deprecating the version-checking or update how it works to be meaningful in the context of their latest feature, AwesomeVer.
This isn't about what I can do or can't do, or understand. It's about what's dumb. Having a browser that invalidates addons every couple months... dumb.
If only there were a dozen or so other ways to transfer potentially harmful data that coincidentally require user intervention.
E-mail is fine for passive data, but it's too easy for executables. Users should have to jump through some hoops when handling executables, just like chemists have to take extra precautions when handling unknown or potentially hazardous substances. Handling protocol requires you to slow down and treat the material differently. Sounds good to me.
If your users can't handle FTP, or any of the myriad web file transfer systems, perhaps the answer isn't leaving hydrochloric acid in a Pepsi can on their desk. Don't dumb down the process... smart up the users.
From the looks of the front page, at least, they're in the VoIP market. How is that related to Apple's iCloud?
Because if you click on the link in the upper right-hand corner labeled "Data Center Web Site" you discover they offer a whole lot more than VoIP. From within that area:
"Founded in 1985, iCloud Communications is an established business run by a seasoned management team. We've built a distinguished track record in network technologies and infrastructure operations. Our data center solutions provide a range of colocation, hosting and technical support services to telephony service provider and small-to-mid-sized enterprise customers."
Agreed. I don't find it amusing at all.
Now I find it illuminating. It seems that too much effort is spent making Javascript animated menus and Flash sliding widgets and not enough effort is spent on patches, updates, and decent password policy. Corporate culture prioritizes pretty pictures to sell us more shit we don't need. Meanwhile our personal information - and therefore capacity to buy said shit - is in danger of being leaked.
From Sony to PBS and HBGary in between, too many companies are Doing It Wrong.
For every small task that i want to accomplish, i seem to need to pony up. Every small time programmer tries to make a buck with his little program. Nothing wrong with that, but where are the Free/Libre alternatives?
I hear your pain. I believe there's something philosophically wrong about the software ecosystem's shape these days. I stumbled upon an announcement for a Blackberry release for a "app" that literally doesn't do anything. Its sole purpose is to have no icon, so you can install it and move it on your home screen to create a gap in your icons. It comes in three versions; 4 non-icons, 12 non-icons and 24 non-icons. Something like $2.99 then $3.99 then $4.99 respectively.
I understand capitalism. I understand the desire to extract maximum monetary benefit from least labour incurred. What I don't understand is how the author of the "app" in question doesn't off himself in shame for asking for money in the first place. This isn't a matter of "the market will establish fair value" and the author will get the message when there are zero sales. It's like offering someone a bottle of air, for profit. It's... sleazy.
In conclusion, I blame the Apple ecosystem especially. In the day of Palm PDAs and their ilk, most software was free, and that which wasn't went far beyond today's "app" doo-dad. Paid software was feature-rich. The advent of the iPhone and iTunes' has convinced micro-devs that their latest turd is worth a buck. And now that mentality is spreading to other mobile devices and even desktop platforms.
No, MS Update is nothing like the Ubuntu Software center (or the software repositories on other distros). You cannot get software from Windows Update.
When you say "cannot", do you mean can? Admittedly the list is very small by current design, but Microsoft Security Essentials is available for distribution via Microsoft Update. So is Silverlight, equivalent to Adobe Flash. So are the various .NET libraries, equivalent to Java.
But really, let's return to the original point. Typical malware infections aren't about the user trying to get their hands on some software. They're about compromised web sites serving up content that looks remarkably like legitimate OS security interfaces which then tell they user they're infected, and telling them where to click to perform a security scan. The user clicks, the user infects the PC. Much of this doesn't rely on OS or browser vulnerabilities, though they may be exploited as well as the social engineering.
The original comment I replied to told users "two simple things"; click the updates button when updates happen and don't download anything. My point remains that getting users to understand and abide by those rules isn't any more practical on a non-Windows platform than it is a Windows platform. "You told me update when it says update, so I figured scan when it says scan is the same thing." That's what you'll get. By definition with social engineering the user is vulnerability. Changing time zone, clothing style, or operating system won't change that.
This is why the only solution is a GNU/Linux solution. You tell people two simple things. Click the update button when the updates happen and don't download ANYTHING. If you want a program click the Ubuntu Software center and search for it. Everything else is going to potentially infect you.
That's cute, but if users were inclined to obey exactly those instructions, Windows would be fine.
It's that word. "Closet". That says it all.
The question being asked wasn't "should I get rid of all of the fun stuff I use every day that's sitting in my entertainment room?" Instead it was "can I throw out my unused crap that's all in storage, neglected?"
All that stuff about emulators is just a smokescreen. You're not playing your legacy DOS stuff now, you won't tomorrow, and the day after that you'll be dead. It's a real trick to recognize when you're saving stuff because you have sentimental value attached to the memories, not the stuff itself.
No, of course not. Your cell provider already sends you alerts that you're not being charged for; why would this be any different?
The difference is that the texts they don't charge you for are about them selling you shit you don't want and these texts aren't. Also known as: one is a profit-stream and the other isn't.
He shouldn't've ("should not have" or "shouldn't have") told.
I've used compound contractions like that decades now. My favorite is... it'sn't for "it is not". They're fun in sentences. "If he spends his money today, he won't've enough left to pay the bills later." Couldn't've, shouldn't've, wouldn't've... those are just the simple ones everyone uses, even if they won't admit it. It takes a real pioneer to use doesn't've.
I assure the audience, I'm'n't kidding.
Not that I wouldn't like to see more work on manned spaceflight mind you, but I think you're overestimating the amount of infrastructure needed for this kind of work.
Really? I'd love to think that was true, but I don't think it is.
See, here in 2011 we've got these neat pressures that didn't apply when we were working on the moon landing. Things like safety standards. It's not acceptable if one in a hundred launches or one in two hundred launches ends in a fireball. Not to the taxpaying public it isn't. Back then we were happy with one in ten.
Basically, expect modern spacecraft to be required to be handicap accessible, kosher, non-allergenic, and shaped such that they're not phallic.
What I'm saying is that modern spacecraft are likely hugely over-engineered compared to the primitive ones we used decades ago. While our materials science has improved I suspect that the politics have degraded significantly, creating a much higher bar for entry.
Why would you want it to float away from the wreckage?
So then it can use GPS?
Honest question... why do you want the Flight Data Recorder to use GPS? It knows perfectly well where it is. It's us that don't know where it is. My understanding is that in GPS, it's the satellites that do the transmitting.
Regardless, KISS seriously applies here. A FDR is intended to be massively robust not feature-laden. And so it should be. Less variables in locating it is a Good Thing. Recovery specialists don't need to wonder "did it float away and the transmitter failed or is it laying on the ocean floor because the balloon didn't inflate?" While recovery in wreckage at the ocean-bottom is difficult, it's simple in the sense of having relatively few variables involved.
What I wouldn't mind seeing is a set of a half-dozen recorders scattered throughout an aircraft. You know... redundancy.
Microsoft says Give us more money to fix the bugs in Windows 7. It's called Windows 8.
Not a popular question I know, but I've got to ask... what are these bugs in Win7 that you've encountered that need fixing? Seriously. No, don't go searching for something. Tell me what part of Win7 that you have ever tried to use has failed you due to bug. Not design critique. Bug.
Be real. Given the massive feature set of the OS and how many lines of code there are in it, the thing is very, very reasonable quality-wise.
Usually if only IE is supported, it is IE6. And even IE7 is not IE6-compatible.
Might as well reply though the discussion is long dead. We've found a lot of "portal" sites in the insurance industry that really, "support" is a word only. Firefox and the like probably work, but the insurance carriers or business partners simply won't endorse anything but IE. They often don't specify a version. Also, we can seemingly always get away with IE7 or IE8 in compatibility mode.
It isn't the end of the world that I can't get the next IE wedged on existing Terminal Servers, but the point remains that the life cycle for Server 2008 is absurdly short, purely because it's on the Vista kernel while R2 is on the Win7 kernel. Microsoft has been making decisions recently regarding support based on desktop OS that has impact on servers. Remote Desktop Client 7 works on WinXP SP3 but won't install on Server 2003 Just Because. Amusingly I regularly hack it in (it's only an EXE a couple DLLs and a few support files) and it works fine (excepting CredsSP support). MS arbitrarily decided that though Server 2003 is newer, demand for RDC 7 wasn't worth configuring the MSI so it could install on it. Thanks. Here we are again only with IE, on a five year newer server platform.
I get it. Nobody runs Vista, so nothing of value was lost. On the other hand, the new features for RDS in Server 2008 are huge, which prompted mass movement off Server 2003 to Server 2008. This sucks.
Great marketing for alternative browsers :^)
There's an implication beyond "Vista support is dropped", which considering the number of companies that avoided Vista on the desktop itself isn't a big deal... Server 2008 support is also dropped. R2 is the Win7 kernel so that's still valid, but my users on Terminal Servers as little as three years old won't have access to the next IE version.
Think beyond your desktop and consider that much of the corporate ecosystem "supports" IE. I've got clients who need - through no choice of their own - to access partner sites that are only officially supported on IE. For many of them, alternative browsers aren't something I can recommend, sadly. Now we're also being told our future with IE is... "OS upgrades".
Thanks Microsoft. Dropping XP is understandable. Vista/2k8 is too soon.
How about an additional answer: consider well what data you carry on a mobile device.
I have serious difficulty figuring out what scenario was in play that required this particular data to be on a laptop in the first place. Some mobile sales guy needed the data to plug in at a hotel conference room and make a presentation? Some jet-setting bigwig needed to massage the data and do some data-mining while on a trans-oceanic flight?
Even if the laptop's user was tasked with "visit each of these people individually and tell them 'no' in plain English", the data should have been partial and redacted.
Sorry, but corporations - like the human beings they're comprised of - put data on theft-prone devices that shouldn't be there in the first place. Encrypted or not.
Bow-ties are cool.
im sorry, I did not realize I was on the association of anal retentive english majors page, its just a forum post don't go killing yourself over it
ok so here is why, even though my post was atrocious by professor tightass standards, you still understood it, when one quotes the entire parent for zero reason it makes it harder to filter garbage from comment, cause you see, all the comments are squashed down so only the first line is shown.
but hey if you want all your comments to look like someone is a retarded parrot then whatever, its just a pet peeve, please dont piss your pants
Relax. You're wrong. Get used to it. First up, if you're going to inform someone "you're doing it wrong", it behooves you to do it correctly. If you fail, the consequence is minor; ridicule. So don't get so defensive (and offensive at the same time); you screwed up while criticizing someone. You're fair game.
Second, as to your original complaint, you're still wrong. I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot's users, but I suspect at least some behave as I do. I sometimes deliberately read comments nested two or three deep into a thread. Sometimes it's because I'm intrigued by a couple words that make it into the single-line summary. Having the parent quoted is convenient for me. It saves me having to expand the parent then scroll back down simply to gain the context that I could have had were it quoted in the first place. Simply put, by quoting the parent a post becomes self-contained and meaning-complete. Without quoting it is referential and fragmentary. It is easier to ignore data that is present than it is to obtain information that is not. Philosophically-speaking, parent-quoting is a superior practice.
Thirdly, for my own amusement, I'd like to inform you that it doesn't require an "anal-retentive english (sic) major" to appreciate or produce grammatically correct writing. I'm entirely sure that my post has plenty that a professional could point out as flawed yet I still strive for a higher level of correctness than you can be bothered to. There's one. People who obviously don't even try to be accurate convey an air of laziness. As well, there's an underlying message: "my words are untidy and so too is my mind." Right or wrong, whenever you can't be bothered to capitalize letters, use apostrophes, punctuate, and generally ill-express yourself, you're asking to not be taken seriously. Why bother writing at all if you're not trying to be heard?