explanation of the pro's and con's of putting IE7 on my XP box?
Sure:
- Pros: you get the latest Microsoft software that hopefully *fixes* the previous version - Cons: you get the latest Microsoft software that *hopefully* fixes the previous version
Relax everyone, he was given the Most Valuable 'Professional' Award and NOT the Most Valuable 'Person' Award since we all know adware scumbags are sub-human.
I think you got it backward: it's the profession that's despised here, not the person. I'm sure the guy is really nice after work and doesn't force his family to watch popups selling penis enlarger. When he's at work on the other hand, i.e. as a professional, I would like very much to corner him in a blind alley at night with something heavy and blunt.
It's surprisingly not hard to fall off of a segway if you've never been on one before. You have no idea that you can't stand on it before it's been turned on. (I did that fell over caught myself)
but it's not the one its designer intended. Indeed, on a segway, you look like a total dork and you're dangerous (I was passed by one on the sidewalk, I can attest to this).
But there's one area where segways excel, and that's giving a lot of freedom for disabled people to move around. Each time I hear about a segway story, it's about some handicapped person who finds it marvellous. Like this story for example, or this one which are rather typical.
So in short: I reckon segways should be banned on public thoroughfares, and allowed anywhere for disabled people.
Smoking, alcohol, and sex are already off-limits or difficult.
The last flight I took when it was possible to smoke was a 1994 KLM flight. That's 12 years ago man. Getting drunk onboard a plane I think was never a good idea anyway. As for sex, most of us don't find it all that difficult you know...
I must say, this is the first thing that went through my mind when I read the news about that plot. One thing that's almost certain is that no official will release any detail on that plot, on the pretex t that it's an ongoing investigation and that it's top-secret, therefore the public doesn't have any opportunity to check whether this was true or made-up, who the 21 arrested people are, what they were up to, etc... Some details will be released later, when it doesn't really matter anymore if there was foul play or not.
Even if this plot is real, and in a sense I wish it is because otherwise it's a sad day for our democracies, it's not normal that the agencies that have foiled it can brush public scrutiny with the now-usual "it's a secret, trust us" statement.
1 - get a Mac or install Linux 2 - if parents insist on Windows (and I understand them, I'm not a rabid OSS fanboy), get a computer professional to do the backup/reinstall if they can't do it. Seriously, when people lose file, they usually wish they had forked off a bit of money to get it done properly 3 - Whatever they do, don't ask the neighbour's teenager "computer expert", or the wife's brother's cousin who works at IBM: firstly it's embarrassing to ask, secondly it pisses off computer professionals to no end, and thirdly the teenager is, well... I wouldn't.
Teenagers who stumble across these realize they have nothing else to do with their lives, and end up killing American soldiers. It is a military problem.
You look at the problem from the wrong side of the picture: the problem is that Iraqi/arab teenagers will always find fundamentalist propaganda in bazaars, because fundamentalists don't use YouTube to download their video material, they make their own. On the other hand, if you can't find war videos on YouTube, *american* teenagers won't be able to witness what war really is, and form an opinion on whether or not it is a good thing that their country's military is there, and today's teenagers are tomorrow's voters.
Shutting down real-life war material (i.e. not sanctionned material from "embedded journalists") from the net is a way to skew the american public opinion, therefore it's a problem with the democratic process, not a military problem.
Closed Skype protocol gets cracked in X months == Skype releases a new version with a new closed protocol that'll take X more months to crack. Big deal...
Anyway, Skype is a big no-no for me. I don't like software that connects to who-knows-what and uses bandwidth all the time without any way to know what the heck it's doing.
Should rename the book
on
PGP & GPG
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid
title soon to become "PGP & GPG: encryption for the practical suspicious target of the homeland security dept."
For most users (i.e. not power-users doing heavy calculations for some scientific purpose, or high-quality video editing, or raytracing), most processors provide way more power than needed, and have done so for years. Or at least, they *would* provide all that power if the software running on top of it wasn't bloated and unnecessarily complex, unoptimized and badly written. And no, I'm not just talking about Windows, I'm including Linux, MacOS and all the others in the bag.
The best proof that modern software makes modern hardware suck is that, back in the mid-eighties, I used an Atari ST to do desktop publishing, and it wasn't all that different from what I can do now with a simple PC that would look like a supercomputer back then.
I have absolutely no problem at all with 100% public surveillance, as long as all of the video feeds are available to any person at any time, and not just Big Brother.
When the entire populace is asked to police themselves, you end up with people writing anonymous letters to denounce their neighbours to the gestapo.
(and I hereby verify Godwin's law in 10 seconds flat. beat that...)
Says who? I suspect an honest poll of real-life ordinary Americans would reveal that they want affordable social security, the end of the war in Iraq, sensible energy policies and a range of other things first...
I seem to recall hearing somewhere (here maybe?) that BSD was dying. Can anyone confirm these rumors?
Yes, Netcraft can.
Open source projects are also plagued with rah-rah
on
PC-BSD 1.1 Screenshot Tour
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
PC-BSD has as its goals to be an easy-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD. To accomplish this, it currently has a graphical installation, which will enable even UNIX novices to easily install and get it running.
Phew, thank goodness, I was afraid PC-BSD had as its goals to be a hard-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD, and that to accomplish this, it would have a morse-code interface installation, which would enable only ham UNIX expects to get it running...
I mean come on, every desktop-oriented OS on the planet does/tries to do that, it's obvious. This sort of content-less marketting talk is usually spewed out by companies like Microsoft, so I'm always a bit disappointed to read it on open-source project pages.
Slashdot Mirror
explanation of the pro's and con's of putting IE7 on my XP box?
Sure:
- Pros: you get the latest Microsoft software that hopefully *fixes* the previous version
- Cons: you get the latest Microsoft software that *hopefully* fixes the previous version
Relax everyone, he was given the Most Valuable 'Professional' Award and NOT the Most Valuable 'Person' Award since we all know adware scumbags are sub-human.
I think you got it backward: it's the profession that's despised here, not the person. I'm sure the guy is really nice after work and doesn't force his family to watch popups selling penis enlarger. When he's at work on the other hand, i.e. as a professional, I would like very much to corner him in a blind alley at night with something heavy and blunt.
They recognize their kin.
It's surprisingly not hard to fall off of a segway if you've never been on one before. You have no idea that you can't stand on it before it's been turned on. (I did that fell over caught myself)
George, is that you?
but it's not the one its designer intended. Indeed, on a segway, you look like a total dork and you're dangerous (I was passed by one on the sidewalk, I can attest to this).
But there's one area where segways excel, and that's giving a lot of freedom for disabled people to move around. Each time I hear about a segway story, it's about some handicapped person who finds it marvellous. Like this story for example, or this one which are rather typical.
So in short: I reckon segways should be banned on public thoroughfares, and allowed anywhere for disabled people.
Just get those green laser pointers over Thinkgeek and rename the product "green ray". Really, blue is cute, but green is okay too...
If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Are you saying Sony execs watch porn instead of working?
Smoking, alcohol, and sex are already off-limits or difficult.
The last flight I took when it was possible to smoke was a 1994 KLM flight. That's 12 years ago man. Getting drunk onboard a plane I think was never a good idea anyway. As for sex, most of us don't find it all that difficult you know...
I must say, this is the first thing that went through my mind when I read the news about that plot. One thing that's almost certain is that no official will release any detail on that plot, on the pretex t that it's an ongoing investigation and that it's top-secret, therefore the public doesn't have any opportunity to check whether this was true or made-up, who the 21 arrested people are, what they were up to, etc... Some details will be released later, when it doesn't really matter anymore if there was foul play or not.
Even if this plot is real, and in a sense I wish it is because otherwise it's a sad day for our democracies, it's not normal that the agencies that have foiled it can brush public scrutiny with the now-usual "it's a secret, trust us" statement.
my next machine will be a Mac - at that point, there really won't be anything of consequence that I won't be able to run on it.
Viruses, worms, spyware? I'd say that's a pretty consequent share of the software people run on Windows...
The bitter pill is coated with a sweet colorful shell...
I'm so glad I'll be able to life in Prypiat in only 3280 years...
1 - get a Mac or install Linux
2 - if parents insist on Windows (and I understand them, I'm not a rabid OSS fanboy), get a computer professional to do the backup/reinstall if they can't do it. Seriously, when people lose file, they usually wish they had forked off a bit of money to get it done properly
3 - Whatever they do, don't ask the neighbour's teenager "computer expert", or the wife's brother's cousin who works at IBM: firstly it's embarrassing to ask, secondly it pisses off computer professionals to no end, and thirdly the teenager is, well... I wouldn't.
Killing people while listening to Palchelbel's Canon is pure class.
I think Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is more fitting...
Teenagers who stumble across these realize they have nothing else to do with their lives, and end up killing American soldiers. It is a military problem.
You look at the problem from the wrong side of the picture: the problem is that Iraqi/arab teenagers will always find fundamentalist propaganda in bazaars, because fundamentalists don't use YouTube to download their video material, they make their own. On the other hand, if you can't find war videos on YouTube, *american* teenagers won't be able to witness what war really is, and form an opinion on whether or not it is a good thing that their country's military is there, and today's teenagers are tomorrow's voters.
Shutting down real-life war material (i.e. not sanctionned material from "embedded journalists") from the net is a way to skew the american public opinion, therefore it's a problem with the democratic process, not a military problem.
Honestly, you know how addictive this site is if someone posts a story about it going offline to Slashdot and it's accepted!
No, it just means Myspace and Slashdot have similar demographics, which is sad (for Slashdot).
Closed Skype protocol gets cracked in X months == Skype releases a new version with a new closed protocol that'll take X more months to crack. Big deal...
Anyway, Skype is a big no-no for me. I don't like software that connects to who-knows-what and uses bandwidth all the time without any way to know what the heck it's doing.
PGP & GPG: Email for the Practical Paranoid
title soon to become "PGP & GPG: encryption for the practical suspicious target of the homeland security dept."
Never trust anyone who says things like "Greetings!" and "Honorable", and who CAPITALIZES in very ODD places.
Okay, I certainly won't trust you anymore then...
For most users (i.e. not power-users doing heavy calculations for some scientific purpose, or high-quality video editing, or raytracing), most processors provide way more power than needed, and have done so for years. Or at least, they *would* provide all that power if the software running on top of it wasn't bloated and unnecessarily complex, unoptimized and badly written. And no, I'm not just talking about Windows, I'm including Linux, MacOS and all the others in the bag.
The best proof that modern software makes modern hardware suck is that, back in the mid-eighties, I used an Atari ST to do desktop publishing, and it wasn't all that different from what I can do now with a simple PC that would look like a supercomputer back then.
I have absolutely no problem at all with 100% public surveillance, as long as all of the video feeds are available to any person at any time, and not just Big Brother.
When the entire populace is asked to police themselves, you end up with people writing anonymous letters to denounce their neighbours to the gestapo.
(and I hereby verify Godwin's law in 10 seconds flat. beat that...)
A stronger border is what Americans want
Says who? I suspect an honest poll of real-life ordinary Americans would reveal that they want affordable social security, the end of the war in Iraq, sensible energy policies and a range of other things first...
If all distro's wanted to make it easy to install an OS for the lamen, explain to me Gentoo.
Who says the Gentoo folks don't want to make it easy? whether the final distro turns out to be hard to use is another matter.
I seem to recall hearing somewhere (here maybe?) that BSD was dying. Can anyone confirm these rumors?
Yes, Netcraft can.
PC-BSD has as its goals to be an easy-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD. To accomplish this, it currently has a graphical installation, which will enable even UNIX novices to easily install and get it running.
Phew, thank goodness, I was afraid PC-BSD had as its goals to be a hard-to-install-and-use desktop operating system, based on FreeBSD, and that to accomplish this, it would have a morse-code interface installation, which would enable only ham UNIX expects to get it running...
I mean come on, every desktop-oriented OS on the planet does/tries to do that, it's obvious. This sort of content-less marketting talk is usually spewed out by companies like Microsoft, so I'm always a bit disappointed to read it on open-source project pages.