Aside from cost, public opinion is the real factor holding back exactly what you describe. It's a total case of NIMBY. Not in my back yard. "Nobody" wants a nuclear anything anywhere near them. Nuclear bad. Radiation bad. Eeeeevil.
So. All you need to do is convince everyone you meet to stop being afraid of nuclear energy. While you're at it, please do the same for fears of the boogeyman, terrorists, cloning, cancer, and people with different coloured skin.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
I once asked a distinguished but elderly scientist whether there was a large elephant on my head. He said he thinks that a large invisible elephant sitting on my head is impossible. Since he is very probably wrong, that means it is more likely than not that I've had an elephant sitting on my head for many years and didn't know.
You mangled and extended the logic rather severely there. Because he said he thought a large invisible elephant sitting on your head is impossible, Arthur C. Clarke's quote indicates he's "very probably wrong". That means that probably it's possible that there's a large invisible elephant on your head. There's no statement suggesting the probability is high, or the duration is high, or your ignorance is involved. Simply that it's probably possible.
Worse, through "magic" advanced technology, it might actually be possible. If you allow for light-distortion technology that masks objects from visible light, and you allow for levitation devices, it's within the realm of imaginable for you to have an invisible elephant over your head when you ask your question. Sure... the technology doesn't currently exist, and there's no strong reason to think it's around the corner, but it's not utterly ludicrous to think that it could happen. Or could have happened prior to you asking your highly unusual question.
When someone gets guns pointed at them for carrying "bomb laden" luggage the person who thinks his luggage is clean stands there in disbelief as they demand he gets on the floor and he is so stunned that he doesn't go down and gets mowed down on concourse B by over eager TSA agents....
No, no. We want that to happen.
Not a troll. Let me explain quickly. No US politician can safely propose reduction in the "security" measures in place. Their opponent would eviscerate them in the public eye. "Candidate X doesn't care about your life. Vote for me, Candidate Y." There's a feedback loop that can't be broken as things stand right now.
If a few highly visible events demonstrated that these "safety measures" were actually more than just annoying and expensive but dangerous then there might possibly be the context change that might allow a return to sanity. Ideally a really cute little girl, about eight years old, preferably holding a teddy bear, with a lollypop in her mouth, wearing a little dress. Something supremely photogenic. Something that screams "We, The People... murdered this child." I know the suggestion is distasteful, but it's the closest I've heard yet that might break the security-theater death-spiral.
Awesome. I can see how that would be of value on a brand new, unbooted PC. All that fragmentation...
Dude/Chick, when was the last time you actually checked a new PC? I deal with new IBM/Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Toshiba machines on a regular basis and it's brutal what you get out of the box. The disk imaging that's done to master these machines pretty obviously is a block-by-block system. I haven't seen a system come out of the box even vaguely optimal.
You aught to, especially if your previous "fix" was to block the website used for business purposes in the first place.
The role of IT is not to control information technology, metering it out to the users as the IT gods see fit. The role of IT is to support the business. That means facilitating their work as much as possible, and protecting them from the dangers they are unaware of.
Frankly, if I were your manager and you took that attitude toward your customers on a daily basis, I'd fire you.
IT departments don't make a company money. They either help them make more money by increasing productivity, or they help prevent them from losing money by protecting their information-related assets. If you are doing neither, you don't belong there.
You're attributing to IT departments a degree of autonomy and self-direction that is rare. The role of IT is to do what they're told by their superiors. If that includes controlling information and metering it out, that's the way it's going to be. It's highly likely that if you're prevented from visiting a particular web site, it's because IT was told to block it. Perhaps not specifically but categorically. If we're told to implement technology to prevent employees from browsing X, Y, and Z, we do our level best to do that. If A, B, and C happen to be included in the lists we haven't created ourselves, we rely on users to tell us when they've been blocked as collateral damage, and we address it. If your note requesting that change is rude - and implying or stating it's our fault, you've got to expect to ruffle feathers. If you arrive at work and it's cold so you send of a snarky e-mail to the janitorial staff to "fix the heat because the cold office is costing you money", it's entirely possible that the recipient janitor is going to shrug his shoulders, forward it to the accounting department that didn't pay the gas bill, then go outside and key your car.
All of your rhetoric is amusing, but you're taking out your frustrations where it's not due.
Often when people behave like idiots, it's because you are unaware of a bunch of motivators in their world.
It is instructive to note how many useful idiots keep calling to normalize relations with the sort of barbarians that lock people up for passing out cell phones.
Normalize travel and trade with these animals? Really?
Seriously, would YOU travel into such a hellhole? Do business as usual with such a morally bankrupt regime and expect them to honor contracts like civilized people?
Yes, really. Why? Because you nominally care about the vast majority of normal people who live there. You may disagree with the ruling class, but that doesn't necessarily justify an embargo.
Also, let's keep in mind that these people locked up someone who was effectively an agitator. Or is sedition only bad when it's being done against the US standards? The Cubans locked up a man who was disruptive to their country's stability, like it or not. And again, if the embargo wasn't in place, the sheer contact between the normal citizens of each culture would have done a lot to educate both sides. People learn from contact. Leaving a country in isolation does nothing for them.
Depose or do not depose. Those are the two reasonable courses of action. The embargo at this point is nothing but pride.
The LEGO brand name should always be written in capital letters
LEGO must never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials,LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
The first time the LEGO brand name appears it must be accompanied by the Registered symbol ®
If you don't agree with the terms, you don't click the "I agree" button. Simple as that.
Let's run with that thought for a moment. If I'm given a brand new copy of Windows 7 in Chinese, I won't be able to understand any written text on the screen. At the same time, it's entirely likely that I will manage to install the OS. If there's an "I Accept" and "I Decline" option presented, sooner or later I'll stumble upon the button that gets the OS installed. At no time will I have read or comprehended the EULA presented. How can my "agreement" be considered binding when a} I was never made aware in a manner I can possibly understand, b} nobody was around to witness the agreement?
From there, let's go further. What if I encourage my cat to walk on my keyboard during the EULA screen? Sooner or later he's going to step on "Y", at which time my feline is bound to the terms of the EULA, not me. I've got a working computer, Microsoft's got a contract with a pussy cat. You can view it that I clearly caused the "Y" key to be pressed, but you can more strongly view that I clearly don't agree to the EULA. I have caused the computer to become operational without agreeing to the terms myself.
Finally let's take a look at EULA text in general. One: they're next to incomprehensible to non-lawyers to start with. Two: I don't yet have an operational computer to allow me to look up the implications of the EULA's wordings despite having paid for one. I reiterate: my payment for the computer and its contents has been accepted and I now own it but am prevented from using my purchase after the transaction is complete. Microsoft has elected to attempt to limit and control my purchase after accepting my money (indirectly through the OEM).
So, I can't understand a EULA that's been added to my computer against my will and the only way I can make use of my expensive purchase is to bind my cat's soul to Microsoft. Sounds fair.
What, in your opinion, justifies a version bump between OS releases?
I see where you're going with this, but my issue isn't with the version numbering. The point I was making was with regards to consumer enthusiasm. Was Vista justified in being numbered 6? Sure, probably. Is 7 justified in being numbered 7? Maybe, maybe not. I haven't seen much actual change but maybe there is more.
My point is that regardless of the number, I - and many others like me - simply don't care. There's no "gotta have it" feature. Windows 3.1 to Win95 was a huge jump in functionality from plug & play to mostly 32-bit code that ran smoother to better networking support. Win98 not so much but again Windows 2000 and XP were a huge jump from previous OS versions. Corporates and residential consumers wanted things like Group Policy, remote management, camera wizards and an End Task that really worked. Vista a 7 just lack anything to get people truly riled up about. They're not greatly better, they're just different.
Think about the Office 2007 ribbon. Is it "better"? Supposedly for untrained users. Fine. That's justification for change. But for anyone who's got and knows Office 2003 or older, it's almost universally not something that users ask for upgrades to get.
The kernel of my post was responding to the question "how many Win7 licenses are bought with new machines". I say: almost all of them because relatively few people run out to buy Windows upgrades any more.
I suspect the days of people running out and buying Windows upgrades in droves are behind us. The excitement and wonder doesn't happen anymore because the OS we already have by and large does what we need an OS to do. What defines an OS is now mature, no longer making leaps and bounds of dramatic feature inclusions that matter to Joe Average. Even IT guys are unimpressed.
Second point: I had my first hands-on with Windows 7 today. I'm somewhat bewildered. In what way is this not Vista 1.1? Sure, okay, there are some cosmetic changes to the taskbar but really, I fail to find anything revolutionary. Certainly nothing that justifies the same folks who've said all along that Vista was "bad" to say that 7 is "awesome". Is a slight reduction in UAC prompts really enough?
This sort of litigation is unwise at best. If providing network access makes one responsible for the users' actions, that will severely impact availability of service. Hotels, coffee shops, airports and the like all become liable for their users. Bad move. What if I power my laptop using electricity at the pub but use an AirCard to use a cell phone network to infringe copyright? Ultimately this is foolishness, regardless of how copyright infringement is viewed.
It's time to reinforce the concept that I am responsible for my actions, and nobody else. Aiding and abetting is something entirely different from what a WiFi provider does. Just because copyright owners can't actually track down the person infringing doesn't make it okay to pick the next guy up as the source of the proverbial pound of flesh.
What I'm hearing from you is "Oh, he was nuts, so no big deal." You seem to be trying to rebut my assertion that quitting smoking strongly affects people by downplaying my anecdote. I shall then assume that you contending that quitting smoking has negligible psychological impact. Are you just going to do some cryptic hand waving and blame it on sheer coincidence?
What you're hearing and what's being said aren't the same thing at all. Your friend was a deeply troubled, mentally fragile individual. His story isn't to be trivialized.
That being said, bringing your story into this discussion is akin to bringing up a quadriplegic as evidence against the idea that exercise is strongly beneficial in fighting depression. Sure, there are fringe cases where it isn't very useful, just as there are fringe cases where willpower isn't beneficial in quitting smoking. Therapy and exercise go a huge distance and mind-chemistry-altering drugs should always be a last resort in treating depression. Same thing with smoking; drugs should always be a last resort.
So hey, your friend is dead. I'm sorry. That's sad. But for the non-mentally-ill, the article's vaccine shouldn't be trumpeted as success, but rather as failure to find a less dangerous means to help people.
Not do-able if you get internet from your cable provider (Fios, or Uverse too).... If they see a shift, guess what: internet bandwidth costs will go up.
That's just it. We get cable, then get Internet over that, then get our TV over the Internet over the cable. The next logical progression is to have our Internet data transcoded into what we're watching via some stenography trick. Then we can have Internet over cable over Internet over cable.
But really, what the question is trying to ask is "Time to turn all data-providers into Internet providers only and get our services and content that way?" The summary title is pithier. Now I don't know if I'll get +5 Insightful, +5 Funny, or -5 Guy Who Used Pithier In A Sentence. My guess is +0 Ignored Like Usual.
One person's actions manages to unseat several elected officials
Disagree. The blogger's actions didn't unseat them. Their resignation did. There's a world of difference. If the blogger had been able to unseat them despite their wishes and the wishes of their constituents, that would be a break in democracy. Instead the blogger was able to convince them and/or their constituents that their tenure should end. That's as democratic as can be. If the blog entries were based on lies and nobody discovered that it's an entirely different issue.
My point is there's a vast difference between one person filing letters of resignation for a bunch of people and everyone accepting them because the process "says so" or something equally unlikely and a "journalist" swaying opinion.
Why is it okay to force anyone to be injected with experimental treatments for any illness? That's precisely what flu vaccines are. They may help against a particular strain of flu and they may have side-effects.
Experimental. In the world I live in, until there's a earth-shattering apocalyptic event going on, forcing doctors to take anything should be off the table.
How is traffic-shaping necessary? Oh, right... it's necessary when you have a bunch of customers you're selling 3Mbps DSL circuits to who are very nearly saturating your backbone architecture and maxing out your peering agreements THEN you decide to "upgrade" your customers to 4Mbps service. You do that to "compete" with those other guys on cable who have just raised their advertised service rates. Of course, you don't actually upgrade your back-end... that's expensive. You just adjust a port rate limit at the CO and call it a day. Things start to break because of all of those nasty customers using 25% more bandwidth than you can support. Poof, traffic-shaping and you're back to 3Mbps per customer on average. Hey! Now you can "upgrade" everyone to 5Mbps service!
I'd far rather have a slower rated link that's guaranteed not interfered with than a faster but shaped link.
Note: the "other guys" on cable are doing the same thing, over-selling their links. This is just a circle-jerk.
It's an interesting branding issue - a significant proportion of the non-technical people I know that use Firefox call it Mozilla (though my dad keeps mispronouncing it "Mot-zilla", and he's not the only one I've met that does that).
Same cause as the one wherein I have to help my customers recover their Microsoft documents. Or fix the error they keep getting sometimes - they don't know when - in their Microsoft, which they refuse to write down. I've got a customer running two programs from Primavera (now owned by Oracle): Primavera Project Planner (P3) and Primavera Expedition. They're both "Primavera" to every employee at that customer.
The cause is marketing. Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Office Word 2007. Microsoft Internet Explorer. Primavera Project Planner. IBM Lotus SmartSuite. Even CorelDRAW! and Corel WordPerfect. End-users retain the first word, no more. If companies would stop slapping their company name all over their product names, my life would be easier. I'm sure it's the same in the automotive industry; Ford Fusion, Ford Flex, Ford F150.
The famous litany of Slashdot: "if only I had mod points right now."
Last Chance to See is very likely his best work ever. The fact that it's nonfiction and has a meaningful message is that much more impressive. When I finally laid hands on that book I badly wished for DNA to go on and do more in that general genre. He could have written further on the issues that he personally cared about since it was obviously his passion that reignited his style. While the latter HHGTTG books clearly weren't his best works, Last Chance showed that it wasn't that the author had "lost it" but rather that he'd lost interest in that topic. His death is a shame for a great number of reasons, but the one that rings truest above the personal level is that he could have made important issues accessible and fun to the masses. Like Angelina Jolie only not a Hollywood twit.
I could live with the current semantics just fine if there were two Google modes: research and purchase. When I search for "Laserjet 4000" in research mode, I'm explicitly saying that I'm searching for pages ABOUT Laserjet 4000 printers, and absolutely not looking for a way to BUY a Laserjet 4000. Contextually isolating these two modes would be hugely helpful. When I want to buy a Widget and I'm simply looking for the best deals, I don't want a bunch of pages where people are reviewing or discussing the product. When I want to fix my Widget, I don't want a bunch of pages trying to sell me a new one. Sometimes a mixture is good, but for me it usually isn't.
I just wanted to add a little info for you. AutoCAD is one of the trickier apps to get working without admin rights. It'll take more than a few iterations to fix it. Most apps are simple and just need a single folder or registry key set to allow Users Full Control on them. Sometimes it's as stupid as running the app once as administrator to let it create an.INI file in a naughty folder (like C:\WINDOWS) and then granting perms on that one file, but in AutoCAD's case it's a few more. Still, very, very do-able and worth the result.
The basic method is simple. Install the app, run it as administrator to prove it works. Run it as the user with local admin rights again to prove it works. Strip the admin rights from the user and log back on as them. Use RunAs to get a command prompt running in administrator's security context. Launch FileMon and RegMon (or the newer ProcMon if you'd like) from this command prompt and filter it's output to only show you what your target software's executable name is. Run the app the normal way. Something will break. Alt-Tab back to your monitoring tools and search (Ctrl-F) for Access Denied. There may be several. Using the administrator command prompt, you can run REGEDIT as administrator, allowing you to make changes there without logging off. Woot! You can't run Explorer that way, so file permissions are a tiny bit trickier. I personally just fire up NOTEPAD from the administrator command prompt, then hit File | SaveAs to get an Explorer-like window. You can right-click on folders in there to get the menu, then use Properties to get to the Security tab as usual. For files, simply set the filter in Notepad to show you all files (*.*) and you'll be able right-click on them too!
Once you get used to using this technique, you'll start to recognize common Access Denied messages that DON'T need to be changed. Oh no! This app is trying to do something to the Joystick section of the registry! Meh.
Obviously, if your main executable shells out to other executables, you'll need to trace them as well. Fire up Process Explorer to sniff around at what's running what. That's another MS (former SysInternals) freebie.
Since the NT kernel rolled out and added file/registry perms, I have been defeated by exactly two apps to date. Simply Accounting and Quickbooks each contain some weird internal PDF creation system. I couldn't get that particular function working, even after satisfying every file/registry demand the apps had. I figure there's some weird privilege that I could probably assign in Local System Policy if I knew what it is. Probably some weird "create inverted meta-fraking named pipe wormholes" or something. It wasn't important as everything else in both apps work 100%.
I support a lot of industries ranging from clerical to manufacturing and virtually all of my clients have at least one industry-specific weirdo app to go along with the usual staples. Sure, I see MS Office and WordPerfect Suite all the time, but I see custom insurance quoting packages, real-estate organizers, tool & mold cutter-path tracing packages, financial whatsits, and art gallery asset tracking databases as well as point-of-sale crap written in MS Access. The above technique works for virtually everything. Just be patient and methodical and you'll get where you need to be.
Good luck, and if you need any advice or help, let me know. We're all in this together and the more we help each other, the fewer screwed up PCs out there there will be.
1.) We are an architecture office which runs AutoCAD problem is this requires Power User group membership in order to run. (also on windows even without admin privs malicious software can infect.
No, AutoCAD doesn't require Power User membership. What it requires is someone to spend a few minutes to adjust the system to allow it (and pretty much anything else) to run with User perms only. Do a Google search for Filemon and Regmon formerly from SysInternals and now Microsoft free software. Run them (using RunAs since these DO require admin rights) while your users have normal perms. Set them to only show you what ACAD.EXE does. When it craps out (and it will), search the logs for Access Denied. Manually add perms for Users Full Control to the folders and registry keys that it requires. This will take several passes as the program will run better and better each time. Write down what you have to permit, so next time you install on a new machine you'll know what you need.
Almost none of my hundreds of supported desktops allow users to have admin rights. The ones I'm not PERMITTED to spend the labour tend to get owned periodically. The non-admin systems don't. Really. Since Win2k's release I have yet to have even one system actually get infected. Light damage, yes. Infected, no.
What... you think admins running Citrix or Terminal Servers just throw their hands up in the air and accept some lazy-ass vendor's word that their software NEEDS admin rights?
I figure any ISP who does this is manned by aliens. It's the only way they could have learned so much about shoving unwanted things up people's asses.
But seriously, I liken this to me using their mail server, and if I make a typo in the e-mail address, instead of giving me an NDR they did a search on all the terms in my mail and sent it along to someone "appropriate". An NDR is the PROPER response and anything else isn't.
Speaking of NDRs, I'm predicting they're the next advertising interception. They could throw a buttload of adverts in any and every NDR sent to their customers. "Sorry, your mail couldn't be delivered as requested, but have you considered refinancing your home?"
Re:Has the virus been observed in any animal ?
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New HIV Strain Discovered
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It somehow seems relevant to be able to tell people which animal they should try to avoid. Chimpanzees ? Gorilla's ? Other types of monkeys or perhaps an entirely different animal ?
Dude, in some southern African countries the adult prevalence hits 20% The animal to avoid on that content appears to be: humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Aside from cost, public opinion is the real factor holding back exactly what you describe. It's a total case of NIMBY. Not in my back yard. "Nobody" wants a nuclear anything anywhere near them. Nuclear bad. Radiation bad. Eeeeevil.
So. All you need to do is convince everyone you meet to stop being afraid of nuclear energy. While you're at it, please do the same for fears of the boogeyman, terrorists, cloning, cancer, and people with different coloured skin.
This is me, rather annoyed that a day after my mod points expired without comments I felt informed enough to moderate... you post this.
Please consider this my +1 Insightful.
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
I once asked a distinguished but elderly scientist whether there was a large elephant on my head. He said he thinks that a large invisible elephant sitting on my head is impossible. Since he is very probably wrong, that means it is more likely than not that I've had an elephant sitting on my head for many years and didn't know.
You mangled and extended the logic rather severely there. Because he said he thought a large invisible elephant sitting on your head is impossible, Arthur C. Clarke's quote indicates he's "very probably wrong". That means that probably it's possible that there's a large invisible elephant on your head. There's no statement suggesting the probability is high, or the duration is high, or your ignorance is involved. Simply that it's probably possible.
Worse, through "magic" advanced technology, it might actually be possible. If you allow for light-distortion technology that masks objects from visible light, and you allow for levitation devices, it's within the realm of imaginable for you to have an invisible elephant over your head when you ask your question. Sure... the technology doesn't currently exist, and there's no strong reason to think it's around the corner, but it's not utterly ludicrous to think that it could happen. Or could have happened prior to you asking your highly unusual question.
When someone gets guns pointed at them for carrying "bomb laden" luggage the person who thinks his luggage is clean stands there in disbelief as they demand he gets on the floor and he is so stunned that he doesn't go down and gets mowed down on concourse B by over eager TSA agents....
No, no. We want that to happen.
Not a troll. Let me explain quickly. No US politician can safely propose reduction in the "security" measures in place. Their opponent would eviscerate them in the public eye. "Candidate X doesn't care about your life. Vote for me, Candidate Y." There's a feedback loop that can't be broken as things stand right now.
If a few highly visible events demonstrated that these "safety measures" were actually more than just annoying and expensive but dangerous then there might possibly be the context change that might allow a return to sanity. Ideally a really cute little girl, about eight years old, preferably holding a teddy bear, with a lollypop in her mouth, wearing a little dress. Something supremely photogenic. Something that screams "We, The People... murdered this child." I know the suggestion is distasteful, but it's the closest I've heard yet that might break the security-theater death-spiral.
Awesome. I can see how that would be of value on a brand new, unbooted PC. All that fragmentation...
Dude/Chick, when was the last time you actually checked a new PC? I deal with new IBM/Lenovo, HP, Dell, and Toshiba machines on a regular basis and it's brutal what you get out of the box. The disk imaging that's done to master these machines pretty obviously is a block-by-block system. I haven't seen a system come out of the box even vaguely optimal.
You aught to, especially if your previous "fix" was to block the website used for business purposes in the first place.
The role of IT is not to control information technology, metering it out to the users as the IT gods see fit. The role of IT is to support the business. That means facilitating their work as much as possible, and protecting them from the dangers they are unaware of.
Frankly, if I were your manager and you took that attitude toward your customers on a daily basis, I'd fire you.
IT departments don't make a company money. They either help them make more money by increasing productivity, or they help prevent them from losing money by protecting their information-related assets. If you are doing neither, you don't belong there.
You're attributing to IT departments a degree of autonomy and self-direction that is rare. The role of IT is to do what they're told by their superiors. If that includes controlling information and metering it out, that's the way it's going to be. It's highly likely that if you're prevented from visiting a particular web site, it's because IT was told to block it. Perhaps not specifically but categorically. If we're told to implement technology to prevent employees from browsing X, Y, and Z, we do our level best to do that. If A, B, and C happen to be included in the lists we haven't created ourselves, we rely on users to tell us when they've been blocked as collateral damage, and we address it. If your note requesting that change is rude - and implying or stating it's our fault, you've got to expect to ruffle feathers. If you arrive at work and it's cold so you send of a snarky e-mail to the janitorial staff to "fix the heat because the cold office is costing you money", it's entirely possible that the recipient janitor is going to shrug his shoulders, forward it to the accounting department that didn't pay the gas bill, then go outside and key your car.
All of your rhetoric is amusing, but you're taking out your frustrations where it's not due.
Often when people behave like idiots, it's because you are unaware of a bunch of motivators in their world.
It is instructive to note how many useful idiots keep calling to normalize relations with the sort of barbarians that lock people up for passing out cell phones.
Normalize travel and trade with these animals? Really?
Seriously, would YOU travel into such a hellhole? Do business as usual with such a morally bankrupt regime and expect them to honor contracts like civilized people?
Yes, really. Why? Because you nominally care about the vast majority of normal people who live there. You may disagree with the ruling class, but that doesn't necessarily justify an embargo.
Also, let's keep in mind that these people locked up someone who was effectively an agitator. Or is sedition only bad when it's being done against the US standards? The Cubans locked up a man who was disruptive to their country's stability, like it or not. And again, if the embargo wasn't in place, the sheer contact between the normal citizens of each culture would have done a lot to educate both sides. People learn from contact. Leaving a country in isolation does nothing for them.
Depose or do not depose. Those are the two reasonable courses of action. The embargo at this point is nothing but pride.
Yes, I'm being funny.
How dare you say "LEGOs"?!?
As per the company's web site... http://cache.lego.com/downloads/aboutus/LEGO_company_profile_UK.pdf
The LEGO brand name should always be written in capital letters
LEGO must never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials,LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
The first time the LEGO brand name appears it must be accompanied by the Registered symbol ®
Wait for it...
Wait for it...
The plural of Lego is Lego.
If you don't agree with the terms, you don't click the "I agree" button. Simple as that.
Let's run with that thought for a moment. If I'm given a brand new copy of Windows 7 in Chinese, I won't be able to understand any written text on the screen. At the same time, it's entirely likely that I will manage to install the OS. If there's an "I Accept" and "I Decline" option presented, sooner or later I'll stumble upon the button that gets the OS installed. At no time will I have read or comprehended the EULA presented. How can my "agreement" be considered binding when a} I was never made aware in a manner I can possibly understand, b} nobody was around to witness the agreement?
From there, let's go further. What if I encourage my cat to walk on my keyboard during the EULA screen? Sooner or later he's going to step on "Y", at which time my feline is bound to the terms of the EULA, not me. I've got a working computer, Microsoft's got a contract with a pussy cat. You can view it that I clearly caused the "Y" key to be pressed, but you can more strongly view that I clearly don't agree to the EULA. I have caused the computer to become operational without agreeing to the terms myself.
Finally let's take a look at EULA text in general. One: they're next to incomprehensible to non-lawyers to start with. Two: I don't yet have an operational computer to allow me to look up the implications of the EULA's wordings despite having paid for one. I reiterate: my payment for the computer and its contents has been accepted and I now own it but am prevented from using my purchase after the transaction is complete. Microsoft has elected to attempt to limit and control my purchase after accepting my money (indirectly through the OEM).
So, I can't understand a EULA that's been added to my computer against my will and the only way I can make use of my expensive purchase is to bind my cat's soul to Microsoft. Sounds fair.
What, in your opinion, justifies a version bump between OS releases?
I see where you're going with this, but my issue isn't with the version numbering. The point I was making was with regards to consumer enthusiasm. Was Vista justified in being numbered 6? Sure, probably. Is 7 justified in being numbered 7? Maybe, maybe not. I haven't seen much actual change but maybe there is more.
My point is that regardless of the number, I - and many others like me - simply don't care. There's no "gotta have it" feature. Windows 3.1 to Win95 was a huge jump in functionality from plug & play to mostly 32-bit code that ran smoother to better networking support. Win98 not so much but again Windows 2000 and XP were a huge jump from previous OS versions. Corporates and residential consumers wanted things like Group Policy, remote management, camera wizards and an End Task that really worked. Vista a 7 just lack anything to get people truly riled up about. They're not greatly better, they're just different.
Think about the Office 2007 ribbon. Is it "better"? Supposedly for untrained users. Fine. That's justification for change. But for anyone who's got and knows Office 2003 or older, it's almost universally not something that users ask for upgrades to get.
The kernel of my post was responding to the question "how many Win7 licenses are bought with new machines". I say: almost all of them because relatively few people run out to buy Windows upgrades any more.
I suspect the days of people running out and buying Windows upgrades in droves are behind us. The excitement and wonder doesn't happen anymore because the OS we already have by and large does what we need an OS to do. What defines an OS is now mature, no longer making leaps and bounds of dramatic feature inclusions that matter to Joe Average. Even IT guys are unimpressed.
Second point: I had my first hands-on with Windows 7 today. I'm somewhat bewildered. In what way is this not Vista 1.1? Sure, okay, there are some cosmetic changes to the taskbar but really, I fail to find anything revolutionary. Certainly nothing that justifies the same folks who've said all along that Vista was "bad" to say that 7 is "awesome". Is a slight reduction in UAC prompts really enough?
No, no, and more no.
This sort of litigation is unwise at best. If providing network access makes one responsible for the users' actions, that will severely impact availability of service. Hotels, coffee shops, airports and the like all become liable for their users. Bad move. What if I power my laptop using electricity at the pub but use an AirCard to use a cell phone network to infringe copyright? Ultimately this is foolishness, regardless of how copyright infringement is viewed.
It's time to reinforce the concept that I am responsible for my actions, and nobody else. Aiding and abetting is something entirely different from what a WiFi provider does. Just because copyright owners can't actually track down the person infringing doesn't make it okay to pick the next guy up as the source of the proverbial pound of flesh.
What I'm hearing from you is "Oh, he was nuts, so no big deal." You seem to be trying to rebut my assertion that quitting smoking strongly affects people by downplaying my anecdote. I shall then assume that you contending that quitting smoking has negligible psychological impact. Are you just going to do some cryptic hand waving and blame it on sheer coincidence?
What you're hearing and what's being said aren't the same thing at all. Your friend was a deeply troubled, mentally fragile individual. His story isn't to be trivialized.
That being said, bringing your story into this discussion is akin to bringing up a quadriplegic as evidence against the idea that exercise is strongly beneficial in fighting depression. Sure, there are fringe cases where it isn't very useful, just as there are fringe cases where willpower isn't beneficial in quitting smoking. Therapy and exercise go a huge distance and mind-chemistry-altering drugs should always be a last resort in treating depression. Same thing with smoking; drugs should always be a last resort.
So hey, your friend is dead. I'm sorry. That's sad. But for the non-mentally-ill, the article's vaccine shouldn't be trumpeted as success, but rather as failure to find a less dangerous means to help people.
"Time To Ditch Cable For Internet TV?"
Not do-able if you get internet from your cable provider (Fios, or Uverse too).... If they see a shift, guess what: internet bandwidth costs will go up.
That's just it. We get cable, then get Internet over that, then get our TV over the Internet over the cable. The next logical progression is to have our Internet data transcoded into what we're watching via some stenography trick. Then we can have Internet over cable over Internet over cable.
But really, what the question is trying to ask is "Time to turn all data-providers into Internet providers only and get our services and content that way?" The summary title is pithier. Now I don't know if I'll get +5 Insightful, +5 Funny, or -5 Guy Who Used Pithier In A Sentence. My guess is +0 Ignored Like Usual.
CLUB HIM! CLUB HIM! The barbie-que is already fired up.
There's a queue for Barbie now and everyone in it is fired up? Pictures, please.
One person's actions manages to unseat several elected officials
Disagree. The blogger's actions didn't unseat them. Their resignation did. There's a world of difference. If the blogger had been able to unseat them despite their wishes and the wishes of their constituents, that would be a break in democracy. Instead the blogger was able to convince them and/or their constituents that their tenure should end. That's as democratic as can be. If the blog entries were based on lies and nobody discovered that it's an entirely different issue.
My point is there's a vast difference between one person filing letters of resignation for a bunch of people and everyone accepting them because the process "says so" or something equally unlikely and a "journalist" swaying opinion.
Why is it okay to force anyone to be injected with experimental treatments for any illness? That's precisely what flu vaccines are. They may help against a particular strain of flu and they may have side-effects.
Experimental. In the world I live in, until there's a earth-shattering apocalyptic event going on, forcing doctors to take anything should be off the table.
How is traffic-shaping necessary? Oh, right... it's necessary when you have a bunch of customers you're selling 3Mbps DSL circuits to who are very nearly saturating your backbone architecture and maxing out your peering agreements THEN you decide to "upgrade" your customers to 4Mbps service. You do that to "compete" with those other guys on cable who have just raised their advertised service rates. Of course, you don't actually upgrade your back-end... that's expensive. You just adjust a port rate limit at the CO and call it a day. Things start to break because of all of those nasty customers using 25% more bandwidth than you can support. Poof, traffic-shaping and you're back to 3Mbps per customer on average. Hey! Now you can "upgrade" everyone to 5Mbps service!
I'd far rather have a slower rated link that's guaranteed not interfered with than a faster but shaped link.
Note: the "other guys" on cable are doing the same thing, over-selling their links. This is just a circle-jerk.
It's an interesting branding issue - a significant proportion of the non-technical people I know that use Firefox call it Mozilla (though my dad keeps mispronouncing it "Mot-zilla", and he's not the only one I've met that does that).
Same cause as the one wherein I have to help my customers recover their Microsoft documents. Or fix the error they keep getting sometimes - they don't know when - in their Microsoft, which they refuse to write down. I've got a customer running two programs from Primavera (now owned by Oracle): Primavera Project Planner (P3) and Primavera Expedition. They're both "Primavera" to every employee at that customer.
The cause is marketing. Microsoft Windows. Microsoft Office Word 2007. Microsoft Internet Explorer. Primavera Project Planner. IBM Lotus SmartSuite. Even CorelDRAW! and Corel WordPerfect. End-users retain the first word, no more. If companies would stop slapping their company name all over their product names, my life would be easier. I'm sure it's the same in the automotive industry; Ford Fusion, Ford Flex, Ford F150.
The famous litany of Slashdot: "if only I had mod points right now."
Last Chance to See is very likely his best work ever. The fact that it's nonfiction and has a meaningful message is that much more impressive. When I finally laid hands on that book I badly wished for DNA to go on and do more in that general genre. He could have written further on the issues that he personally cared about since it was obviously his passion that reignited his style. While the latter HHGTTG books clearly weren't his best works, Last Chance showed that it wasn't that the author had "lost it" but rather that he'd lost interest in that topic. His death is a shame for a great number of reasons, but the one that rings truest above the personal level is that he could have made important issues accessible and fun to the masses. Like Angelina Jolie only not a Hollywood twit.
I could live with the current semantics just fine if there were two Google modes: research and purchase. When I search for "Laserjet 4000" in research mode, I'm explicitly saying that I'm searching for pages ABOUT Laserjet 4000 printers, and absolutely not looking for a way to BUY a Laserjet 4000. Contextually isolating these two modes would be hugely helpful. When I want to buy a Widget and I'm simply looking for the best deals, I don't want a bunch of pages where people are reviewing or discussing the product. When I want to fix my Widget, I don't want a bunch of pages trying to sell me a new one. Sometimes a mixture is good, but for me it usually isn't.
I just wanted to add a little info for you. AutoCAD is one of the trickier apps to get working without admin rights. It'll take more than a few iterations to fix it. Most apps are simple and just need a single folder or registry key set to allow Users Full Control on them. Sometimes it's as stupid as running the app once as administrator to let it create an .INI file in a naughty folder (like C:\WINDOWS) and then granting perms on that one file, but in AutoCAD's case it's a few more. Still, very, very do-able and worth the result.
The basic method is simple. Install the app, run it as administrator to prove it works. Run it as the user with local admin rights again to prove it works. Strip the admin rights from the user and log back on as them. Use RunAs to get a command prompt running in administrator's security context. Launch FileMon and RegMon (or the newer ProcMon if you'd like) from this command prompt and filter it's output to only show you what your target software's executable name is. Run the app the normal way. Something will break. Alt-Tab back to your monitoring tools and search (Ctrl-F) for Access Denied. There may be several. Using the administrator command prompt, you can run REGEDIT as administrator, allowing you to make changes there without logging off. Woot! You can't run Explorer that way, so file permissions are a tiny bit trickier. I personally just fire up NOTEPAD from the administrator command prompt, then hit File | SaveAs to get an Explorer-like window. You can right-click on folders in there to get the menu, then use Properties to get to the Security tab as usual. For files, simply set the filter in Notepad to show you all files (*.*) and you'll be able right-click on them too!
Once you get used to using this technique, you'll start to recognize common Access Denied messages that DON'T need to be changed. Oh no! This app is trying to do something to the Joystick section of the registry! Meh.
Obviously, if your main executable shells out to other executables, you'll need to trace them as well. Fire up Process Explorer to sniff around at what's running what. That's another MS (former SysInternals) freebie.
Since the NT kernel rolled out and added file/registry perms, I have been defeated by exactly two apps to date. Simply Accounting and Quickbooks each contain some weird internal PDF creation system. I couldn't get that particular function working, even after satisfying every file/registry demand the apps had. I figure there's some weird privilege that I could probably assign in Local System Policy if I knew what it is. Probably some weird "create inverted meta-fraking named pipe wormholes" or something. It wasn't important as everything else in both apps work 100%.
I support a lot of industries ranging from clerical to manufacturing and virtually all of my clients have at least one industry-specific weirdo app to go along with the usual staples. Sure, I see MS Office and WordPerfect Suite all the time, but I see custom insurance quoting packages, real-estate organizers, tool & mold cutter-path tracing packages, financial whatsits, and art gallery asset tracking databases as well as point-of-sale crap written in MS Access. The above technique works for virtually everything. Just be patient and methodical and you'll get where you need to be.
Good luck, and if you need any advice or help, let me know. We're all in this together and the more we help each other, the fewer screwed up PCs out there there will be.
All great points, here are mine.
1.) We are an architecture office which runs AutoCAD problem is this requires Power User group membership in order to run. (also on windows even without admin privs malicious software can infect.
No, AutoCAD doesn't require Power User membership. What it requires is someone to spend a few minutes to adjust the system to allow it (and pretty much anything else) to run with User perms only. Do a Google search for Filemon and Regmon formerly from SysInternals and now Microsoft free software. Run them (using RunAs since these DO require admin rights) while your users have normal perms. Set them to only show you what ACAD.EXE does. When it craps out (and it will), search the logs for Access Denied. Manually add perms for Users Full Control to the folders and registry keys that it requires. This will take several passes as the program will run better and better each time. Write down what you have to permit, so next time you install on a new machine you'll know what you need.
Almost none of my hundreds of supported desktops allow users to have admin rights. The ones I'm not PERMITTED to spend the labour tend to get owned periodically. The non-admin systems don't. Really. Since Win2k's release I have yet to have even one system actually get infected. Light damage, yes. Infected, no.
What... you think admins running Citrix or Terminal Servers just throw their hands up in the air and accept some lazy-ass vendor's word that their software NEEDS admin rights?
I figure any ISP who does this is manned by aliens. It's the only way they could have learned so much about shoving unwanted things up people's asses.
But seriously, I liken this to me using their mail server, and if I make a typo in the e-mail address, instead of giving me an NDR they did a search on all the terms in my mail and sent it along to someone "appropriate". An NDR is the PROPER response and anything else isn't.
Speaking of NDRs, I'm predicting they're the next advertising interception. They could throw a buttload of adverts in any and every NDR sent to their customers. "Sorry, your mail couldn't be delivered as requested, but have you considered refinancing your home?"
It somehow seems relevant to be able to tell people which animal they should try to avoid. Chimpanzees ? Gorilla's ? Other types of monkeys or perhaps an entirely different animal ?
Dude, in some southern African countries the adult prevalence hits 20% The animal to avoid on that content appears to be: humans.