but it comes down to having reasonable guards in place, and law to deal with offenders.
No, it comes down to supervising your kids like you would if they were in any other possibly dangerous/subverse/damaging situation. I'm not a "free speech nut" that wants all information, images, etc to be available to everyone. I think restricting underage access to things is a good idea. I also think that restricting things altogether is okay if used carefully.
What I really have a problem with is people who think that the internet should be made safe so that they can let their kids roam free and not have to watch them. What parents should be doing is spending time with their kids while they surf the internet. Not only do they then make sure their child isn't being damaged but they strengthen their relationship with their child.
Parents obviously can't watch their kids all the time, so they have to take the time to sit down and discuss with their child why they should or shouldn't do things. Why there is "bad stuff" on the internet, why they shouldn't experience it just yet and talk through the issues so the child understands.
Then let them roam free on the net with you checking the history and web cache (or proxy logs for the really geeky) or just walking in from time to time to check on them. (Few people can hide their panic when their parents walk in and few parents fail to pick up on this eventually.) After a period of time, your child will have demonstrated that they have earnt your trust and that they do understand so you don't have to check up on them deliberately. If they later do get up to something the chances are that you will happen to walk in at an inopportune time for them eventually. This way the child is aware that the content exists (without having to experience it first hand) and explains why it is considered objectionable. If they go ahead and choose to view the content you can challenge them to justify it. If they can't they have demonstrated that a) they cannot yet be trusted and b) are not yet mature enough to make an informed discussion about the issue. If they do justify it you have to respect their justification, but may wish to put your foot down anyway because you find it offensive - whatever reason, but justify it.
It is horrific to see a child who is exposed to graphic material (or worse, experiences it) before they are mature enough to deal with it so we do need to avoid this. However, just as bad as this is someone who is overly sheltered and doesn't gain the maturity to deal with this before they are thrust out into the world and confronted with it. Then not only are they confronted with the material before they are mature enough to deal with it, they are expected to be mature enough and have lost a large part of their support network by moving away from their parents/family etc.
The only way you can balance these two extremes properly is with a knowledge of the child involved, so enough flexibility has to be present to allow parents to make the decisions. However, some safe-guards have to be in place for parents who are negligent or simply make really bad decisions for the child and the latter is exceptionally hard to judge. There is no perfect system that can make all this work and make everyone happy, but the solution is very definitely not a technological one because we are dealing with people, not technology.
A holster or purse will hide a small gun yes, but not a high powered semi-automatic weapon. So possibility for damage is significantly reduced. Basically, picture a US high school student going nuts with a small pistol and compare the damage to when he has a big high power, semi-automatic.
If you want to trade anecdotes, how about the case where the murderer on a Long Island Commuter train was able to shoot people at will, and was reloading for the second time, before people realized that he didn't intend to stop?
That would be a good anecdote in support of gun control. Basically, you want to have guns because some guy used one to kill people.
The numbers are in, and states where people are free to arm themselves have lower crime rates.
How about looking at the official statistics released by the Australian Beaureau of Statistics that refute your claim. The fact is you cannot conclusively prove that guns either increase or decrease crime because there are always other mitigating studies in any research. The same problem exists with determining whether or not violence on TV makes children more violent.
What it really comes down to with all issues like this, gun control, free speech, abortion, violence on TV, censorship etc, is what the society decides is right for that society. What is right for the US may be wrong for Australia. Now, not every Australian will agree with all the Australian laws, but overall, the majority of Australians are happy with it. That's how a democracy works.
You may want the right to bare arms, but as a community we have decided that we don't.
When you disarm the public, you eliminate the advantage of good people outnumbering bad people.
No, you make the bad people stand out because they're carrying a gun. You also give me the right to walk down the street without worrying which of the people around me is suddenly going to use their gun (we rated that right as more important than the right to bear arms).
Most importantly though, you stop a lot of people from panicking and shooting someone for no good reason, thus defending the right to a fair trial. There was a very unfortunate case a while back where a couple of guys were going to a party, got the wrong house and wound up being shot because the owner thought they were theifs. They didn't respond to his warnings because they didn't speak english so they didn't understand. Perfectly innocent people assumed to be guilty and shot because they made a mistake. That and a range of other reasons is why we chose to disarm the public.
Or to put it more succinctly, it's gonna be a bummer for all the OS/X users if/when Apple goes out of business, and drags OS/X down with it.
Because we all know that Apple is going out of business and all..... Have been for the past 20 years. Sigh, back to being a MS drone because then my OS will *never* become obsolete...
Firstly, at my primary school (which was very small) I was the geek that fixed the computers since about grade 3 (though I was horribly ineffective until about grade 5 or 6). I've had paid casual work in the IT area for 4-5 years and have a vast amount of experience for my age. I've worked in at least 10 different places in the past 4-5 years (often having multiple jobs at the same time so the average job length is about a year). For the past three years I have been studying at university full time. Here's how I've managed to avoid any problems and gain a large amount of respect from my supervisors and everyone else in the organisations I've worked for.
I am not experienced, but I am eagre to gain more experience.
I do not know more than my boss, though I may have new light to shed on a situation.
I am not all-knowing, but I do have significant knowledge in some areas and am happy to learn new areas.
I can do anything if I set my mind to it, but I may not have the knowledge required to do it just yet (research is required).
I will work as hard as I can on the companies time and I will make sure that my estimates of time required are accurate and supplied in the form of a range so that my supervisor/manager is properly informed to assign me an appropriate amount of work. (Ranges should be similar to: if everything goes well, it'll be done in 5 minutes, it's most likely to take about 30 minutes and if things really screw up it will take an hour.)
I will fit in with the culture of the organisation and I will not expect the organisation to accept my culture. I chose to work in this organisation, it works this way, I will work that way.
I will be as accomodating as possible - this should include saying "Good morning" and using simple pleasantries throughout the day.
I will keep my nose out of other people's work unless asked for help (once you have developed a reasonable amount of respect *and* the work is in an area that you are well informed about, offering the occasional suggestion when a co-worker is stuck is appropriate).
The last point is very difficult, it requires that you can accurately judge what people think of your opinion, how much you know about the subject and the problem at hand and whether now is an appropriate time to interject. If I'm unsure I usually keep my mouth shut until I can grab the co-worker involved when they are on their own and obviously not busy and give them my suggestion then.
If you can manage to remember those things and apply them judiciously (there is no hard and fast rules) you should gradually develop respect among your co-workers and they will start coming to you and asking for your advice when they need it as well as generally treating you as equal, because you have shown yourself to be worthy of that respect.
Finally, notice how my advice aligns with much of the advice from the 30-50 year olds here? That's because 1) their right, 2) I've been smart enough to listen to them and 3) they're the older people you want to gain respect from, so listening to them is a very good idea.
Considering the Australian Consumer Commission (the organisation that watches out for consumer rights) has stated that condition of entry signs do have merit, I would hope you have some form of evidence that your claim is correct. In lack of evidence to the contrary, I am very much inclined to believe the ACC as opposed to a random/. comment. Others should obviously seek proper legal advice on the matter.
Mostly, dolphins want to eat fishes and have sex with other dolphins
For once that Dolphin sex link the trolls keep posting is actually on-topic.....
Re:Skimming by employees
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Gift Card Hacking
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Best buy is not legally allowed to check your bag against your recipt if you refuse to allow them, by the way.
That may be true in America but is definitely not true in Australia (conditions apply).
The conditions are that a big obvious sign is posted at the entrance to the store stating that bag searches are a condition of entry - you enter, you give them permission to search. The other restriction is that the sales assistant is not allowed to touch any of your possessions, they can ask you to open your bag and show them and open any compartment etc, but they must not do it themselves.
I would be exceptionally surprised if a similar set of laws were not in place in America and other countries around the world. I am guessing that most stores have a condition of entry, which would most likely hold up in court.
MS will continue to make a Office suite for MacOS because if they don't it will be another prime example of how, as a monopoly, they can control the fate of other companies.
Actually, MS don't just make office for Mac to avoid the lawyers, they make it because it makes a heck of a lot of money for them (comparatively little pirating on Macintosh so software generates far more revenue for the size of the user base). Why would MS completely recode Office and spend time making it "Mac-like" if they were just trying to please the lawyers?
Most people don't realise this but as is continuously stressed at product demos, Office:Mac is not a port of Windows and is developed by a completely separate team that is free to implement whichever features they choose. Some code is shared between the team but the product is far from being a straight port and hasn't been since Word 6 turned out to be such a flop.
They are not going to make a Office suite for Linux because they don't right now and they don't feel they have too. If Linux only has 0.24% of the market its easy to economicaly justify that. Plus there are all the other reasons they will not....
Not porting Office to Linux isn't just justifiable, doing otherwise would be economic suicide. There are very few Linux users on the desktop, even fewer of them who really need Office (most Linux users hack code, Office may be used for documentation but business users will either standardise on some other format or provide a convienient Windows box, home users are unlikely to write documentation or would just use another format).
Then, after we've narrowed down the number of users this far, look at how many Linux users would like to pay $500 (estimated US price, I'm Australian) for an Office suite? Linux users are used to getting software for free, it's part of the free software movement (part, not all - freedom is the main focus). These users would most likely either illegally obtain a copy of Office or simply do without it, further harming sales.
Microsoft isn't the only company shying away from developing commercial programs on Linux and for good reason - there is no way it can be economically justified unless the software appeals to the geeks who make up 99% of the Linux user base. Most geek software is written by geeks, for geeks and so is opensource, commercial software is more often made for the average user and so isn't worth porting to Linux.
Okay, so without meaning to sound like a troll, let me get this straight....
The Slashdot "generalised mentality of contributers" wants to see:
Software be sold outright.
Music listening rights sold outright - buy the CD, listen to any of the tracks on it in any form, anywhere, anytime and without extra fees.
Pay per view for television and movies.
I think I missed something here. Yes being able to call up your favorite movie at any time is a good thing, but why is it that this doesn't scream out as moving to a suscription based service instead of an ownership based service?
Two possibilities are that 1) in America most people pay a subscription to television anyway (in Australia free to air TV has the stronghold atm) and 2) we already pay each time we go to the movies. The second reason is not entirely valid as when you go to the movies you go for the whole experience (wide screen, surround sound, comfy seats and a dark place to take your significant other).
What I would think would be more exciting is seeing the cost of DVDs drop to a price which makes it feasible to have a massive collection of DVDs which you can then play on demand.
Are movies and television that different to music?
A Bachelor of Information Technology in Australia means you are an IT professional, you know computer science, artificial intelligence, software engineering - more like your computer science degrees (I've not heard of one of those in Australia, though there is probably one somewhere). An IT degree is definitely a lot more than "majoring in Word and Excel".
For the record, I know of a number of people who have gotten good jobs (eg: developers for IBM, Sun etc) in America with an Australian IT degree, even when the job required a computer science degree.
The only thing keeping Linux alive right now is LUG's and their support for newbies.
You are completely correct and many times statements like yours have been made here on/. and in almost every place where linux is discussed. The big question is: what do we do about it?
I could create a new IRC channel that is heavily moderated so that any mention of RTFM or similar is punished and supportive comments are encouraged. Even if this turned into the most supportive and helpful channel on IRC it wouldn't solve the problem. There would still be far too many IRC channel, mailing lists, bulletin boards etc that are unsupportive and would counter act it. (There are already supportive Linux IRC channels, mailing lists etc, but noone really comments on them do they?). The same logic applies to pretty much any medium, be it a mailing list, web site, whatever.
A thought that occurs to me however is that we could set up a helpfulness ranking system and create a massive source of useful places to go for help on various linux related topics and (somehow) make it so popular that anyone who does a web search on Linux sees a reference to the site on the first link they click. So that every Linux IRC channel and web site proudly displays their newbie friendly rating (be it high or low) and so that every Linux user can find the level of tech support that they need. I think something like this might just help. The problem is I have no idea how to go about setting it up - that much web publicity (and man power to monitor the ratings) is not easy to find.
1 - Don't have any exposure to non-MS technology
2 - Beleive everything they read in MS PR
3 - Beleive that crashes and unreliability is a fact of life and unavoidable.
4 - Are unaware of goings on in the rest of the computer world.
And these are the people who are supposed to be our future computer experts and are more knowledgable than the common joes. God help us all.
Gah! I can't handle any more! I graduated from a Bachelor of Information Technology with Advanced Studies majoring in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Griffith University (Australia) a few weeks ago and I am not some helpless weenie that has only ever used MS products.
1) I grew up using a Mac and started working on Solaris about 5 years ago. I first installed Linux about 3 years ago when I came to uni and have had some form of UNIX on one of my machines ever since. The first time I ran Windows on one of my machines was a couple of months ago so that I could get more experience at managing windows based servers (I had been providing Windows tech support to friends since primary school).
2) I do not and never have believed everything I've read in MS PR nor any other companies publications.
3) Crashes and unreliability should not be a part of any computing experience, but realistically are likely to occur. We should continue to develop better software engineering techniques to reduce the number of defects however. It is naive to think that our current Software Engineering techniques can produce defect-free software every time.
4) I am well aware of happenings in the computer world for Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS, embedded devices, software engineering and a huge range of other tech related areas. Furthermore, I am an active part of these happenings through the research I am involved with.
Please don't just lump all students or recent graduates in the useless bin, some of us have been working on significant, paid and challenging projects for longer than we've been at university. Even though I may not have as much experience or knowledge as you in one area I quite likely have more knowledge in other areas of computing.
I currently work with two significantly more experienced people, one who is focused on code and has been coding for at least 10 years and one who is focused on software engineering research and design techniques. I have a reasonable amount of experience (though obviously much less than their) and we work well together by asking each other when required and generally consider each other on a level playing field. It is ludicrous to think that you know so much that you can never learn something from someone else.
So the next time you go to insult a someone because of thier apparent lack of computing knowledge try to find out what their strengths are - perhaps one day you will need a good VB developer or someone to help integrate your uber geeky UNIX-based code with a Windows client.
As a final disclaimer though, there *are* many people in the computing industry who have strength which are not in computing. Many of these are current students who originally thought the computer industry was for them, but many of them are experienced developers who failed to keep their knowledge up to date or simply never looked to gain the knowledge. The common factor is a lack of aptitude for computing, not how long they've been in the industry.
File Type is just an attribute like Creation Date.
I stand corrected. Thanks to you and the other reply.
If all else fails when trying to open a document, it makes sense that the application that originally created it can open it.
This disturbs me. If I'm working on a file in one application, more often than not the next time I work on the file I want to work on it in the same application. Why then should creator code be a last ditch effort? Sure, as the article points out, it sometimes isn't what you want, but most of the time I find it is. I suppose setting the preferred order would be the best option but you do have to be careful about how much you allow users to configure an OS as configuration and difficulty go hand in hand. Having said that, configuration settings can be hidden away from the novice user but still there for the expert.
metadata is not and never was stored in resource forks.
This is incorrect. The metadata that is most noticable is the way file types are recognised. The file type and creator codes were stored in the resource fork, other wise if you opened a text file in a text editor (which reads the data fork) it would have displayed the type and creator code somewhere in the document. Further more, when a Mac file is transferred to a Windows machine and back again it is not recognised by the finder as it's specific file type anymore because the Windows file system (any version or flavour) does not support resource forks and thus the metadata gets stripped.
metadata is not and never was stored in resource forks.
This is correct, however where to store the data if not in the resource fork is a challenging question. If you store it in the data fork every application must ensure that they strip out this data before attempting to use it and write it back out when it's done - forget using any of that existing Linux/BSD/UNIX software on OS X without some significant porting. Worse still, Mac file's would be 100% incompatible with every other OS because of the data. The OS could strip out the information first but then the meta-data would be lost if you compress files as the application that compresses the file wouldn't get the meta-data and it's just too prone to error. Good software engineering practice will tell you that separate applications should store their data separately whenever possible so that the effects of defects are limited.
Another option would be to use packages, but that's just nasty. A directory and two files for every file on your hard drive. It's also incompatible with other OS's, applications need to be changed to deal with it and hecne is not a viable solution.
Finally storing the meta-data in a separate file is possible, but has been highly ineffective when it has been used so far (see the Linux HFS implementation which tries this approach). Applications need to ensure that if they move or rename any file they also move or rename the meta-data file. Then you get the problem of meta-data for your meta-data files (they should be hidden and visibility is meta-data).
So when it comes down to it, the only realistic way to implement file types and creator codes is to use a resource fork, which has plenty of problems anyway. Yes, it's nice to be able to open a file by double clicking it, but since I can still do that quite happily I really can't see a problem. I'm yet to have to rename a file on OS X to give it the right extension.
Resource forks are deprecated in Mac OS X (replaced by bundles)...
Wrong on both counts actually. Resource forks are still in full use by OS X and in fact if you read Apple's documentation you will find that it recommends that you set both the file type and creator codes and the file extension. Also, bundles have never been proposed as a replacement for resource forks, they are a way of packaging Applications, Kernel Extensions and a couple of other things, but have never been intended to be used for every file on the file system as resource forks are. With Bundles you can create a GUI for your favorite command line utilities and store the command line program inside the application bundle so you always have the right version in a known location when your program runs - resource forks were designed to store supporting images, sounds etc and meta-data.
Sorensen codec, Quicktime itself (linux client yet?), all parts of MacOS X that aren't in Darwin. And don't they still have the boot rom thing so that you can only load MacOS on Apple hardware? Yeah, real open.
Sorensen codec (as pointed out by many other posters) is not owned or controlled by Apple. The QuickTime client cannot be ported to Linux because it includes the Sorenson codec which isn't available for Linux. Apple is making the move to MPEG-4 and it will only be at this point that a Linux client is even plausible - but then again, there's already xanim which plays QuickTime movies so why would you need a closed-source Apple client?
As for all parts of MacOS X that aren't in Darwin, some of this is because it includes code which is covered by patents owned by other companies (eg: the airport drivers) and some because Apple is in the business of making money. If they gave away their most significant marketing edge, the look and feel and superiour ease of use of their operating system they would have no marketing advantage.
Finally, the boot rom, one poster below replied that this does not exist anymore, and I would tend to agree with that as the new world macintoshes have Open Firmware but I should note that this is a hardware area that I am not familiar with. However, it is entirely possible to run other operating systems on a Macintosh, you may want to check out LinuxPPC.org as proof. That's right, Linux and FreeBSD both are available for Macintosh.
This isn't meant to bash Apple, but you seem to be claiming that they're almost completely "open source" and that's just not the case.
Noone is claiming that Apple is completely opensource, I was merely refuting the point that Apple is a proprietary company because it is simply not true any more - Apple is in fact one of the most standards complient and non-proprietary software companies out there today which isn't just selling another free software distribution. (before people point out companies like IBM who have been adopting opensource, I said one of...)
I'm not saying you're missing out on it - it's just my personal opinions on Macs in general...
Then perhaps, (shock, horror), your perceptions are wrong.... If Mac users aren't missing out on anything and the Mac interface is renowned for it's ease of use *and* now you have a BSD command line to play with - how is it that Macs are only suitable for graphics work?
Maybe you should give your Mac classic to a local school (I know of many that are still using them quite happily for word processing and games) and buy a G4 so you can actually discover what a Mac is like *now*. Just like I went out and installed Linux years ago and got hooked on it and like I bought a PC to check out XP just recently (and got hooked on my Mac).
You really shouldn't judge any piece of software on your experiences of it 3 major versions ago. Before this week, the last time I used Virtual PC was back in 99 with version 2.0 and it was functional (but required a separate IP to the base mac, not really what I'd call "a lot of networking issues", but annoying none the less). This week, I've been playing with Virtual PC 5 which is native to Mac OS X and frankly it rocks. I'm about to leave for a friends place with my TiPB to teach her how to use RedHat Linux and I'm using VPC to provide the safe environment for her to screw up. As I type I'm installing Windows into VPC on my G3 300Mhz and I'm sure I won't be using it too often (the minimum requirements are a 400Mhz G3), it is usable.
Basically, try out VPC again, it has come a long, long way. It doesn't even require a separate IP anymore.
No, NO, NO! Trademarks are lost if they aren't defended, not copyright. Is this really such a difficult distinction for Slashdot readers to make?
Well actually, in Australia at least (and presumably in the US) we have this little law against selective punishment which states that if you are to take legal action against someone you must also take legal action against any other infrignement of the same magnitude against the right you are protecting. In other words, if you regularly let people you don't know walk through your property as a short cut then you cannot sue a specific person for taking the same short cut without showing that you are also going to persecute all future infringements. Otherwise the legal action is discriminatory and will be thrown out of court (see the case of Williams vs Thorsbourne in relation to the Port Hinchinbrook Project). Apply this to copyrights and you will find that they are only viable to the extent that they are protected.
Now, even if this law does not exist in America, the fact that it does in Australia would be enough to convince most international companies to be strict about enforcing their trademarks to save trouble in the long run. Of course, ianal...
Regardless of all this, Apple is certainly not a highly proprietary company any more. Lets take a look at some of the things they work with and sell these days and how open they are:
Mac OS X - Darwin is opensource.
QuickTime - The QuickTime format has been open for quite some time (the Sorensen codec is a third party extension which Apple is kind enough to pay for and distribute to you free of charge). Then there's Darwin Streaming Server which just happens to be fully opensource.
Java - Yep, Apple is now leading the way in Java and rolling their new features back into Sun's codebase (as required by Sun's licencing terms).
Firewire - Err, IEEE1394, 'nuff said.
USB - Invented by a consortium, popularised by Apple, well known standard.
PPC chip - Shared technology between Motorola, Apple and IBM (yes Apple helps in the development of it)
SDRAM, IDE, SCSI, VGA, PCI and AGP - All words you find in PC computer stores.
Airport - aka: 802.11b another international standard popularised by Apple.
PDF - Used heavily throughout OS X, and while I believe their are patents/restrictions of some kind on it (it's owned and controlled by Adobe not Apple), it is the default standard for sharing non-editable files.
In fact there is very little that Apple do that is proprietary anymore. So they defend their look and feel vigourously because that's about the biggest thing that sets them apart from what others could provide. Almost everything else they do is opensource or follows widely published standards.
All in all, Apple looks like a pretty good place for an opensource advocate to find a home.
If only the polititians would get their heads out of their arse, they would realize solar and wind power are the only intelligent, long-term choice. They may bitch about the price, but once these things get to be built in large quantities the price will go down accordingly.
Well actually, there are other initiatives for solar power in Australia which are funded by the Australian Government. Elemental Power (a trading name of Stanwell) are running the Solar Schools project which is building solar panels in a large number of schools around Australia. The installations are subsidised both by the federal government and Stanwell.
Elemental Power is going all out to make green energy a reality in Australia, it's worth checking out their web site to see just how many green power installations there are in Queensland alone.
they are infact similar to be detriment to sales....
Which, btw, was my point. OS revisions that cost significant amounts of your local currancy should include features that warrant the upgrade. 95, 98 and ME didn't.
...they (MicroSoft) still support an operating system most people haven't seen in three years.
Well actually, I work at Griffith University which still uses Win95 right throughout most of it's staff and student computers. They have a site licence for any version of Windows but choose Win95 because it works and has worked consistenly. Why upgrade when there's no need?
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No, it comes down to supervising your kids like you would if they were in any other possibly dangerous/subverse/damaging situation. I'm not a "free speech nut" that wants all information, images, etc to be available to everyone. I think restricting underage access to things is a good idea. I also think that restricting things altogether is okay if used carefully.
What I really have a problem with is people who think that the internet should be made safe so that they can let their kids roam free and not have to watch them. What parents should be doing is spending time with their kids while they surf the internet. Not only do they then make sure their child isn't being damaged but they strengthen their relationship with their child.
Parents obviously can't watch their kids all the time, so they have to take the time to sit down and discuss with their child why they should or shouldn't do things. Why there is "bad stuff" on the internet, why they shouldn't experience it just yet and talk through the issues so the child understands.
Then let them roam free on the net with you checking the history and web cache (or proxy logs for the really geeky) or just walking in from time to time to check on them. (Few people can hide their panic when their parents walk in and few parents fail to pick up on this eventually.) After a period of time, your child will have demonstrated that they have earnt your trust and that they do understand so you don't have to check up on them deliberately. If they later do get up to something the chances are that you will happen to walk in at an inopportune time for them eventually. This way the child is aware that the content exists (without having to experience it first hand) and explains why it is considered objectionable. If they go ahead and choose to view the content you can challenge them to justify it. If they can't they have demonstrated that a) they cannot yet be trusted and b) are not yet mature enough to make an informed discussion about the issue. If they do justify it you have to respect their justification, but may wish to put your foot down anyway because you find it offensive - whatever reason, but justify it.
It is horrific to see a child who is exposed to graphic material (or worse, experiences it) before they are mature enough to deal with it so we do need to avoid this. However, just as bad as this is someone who is overly sheltered and doesn't gain the maturity to deal with this before they are thrust out into the world and confronted with it. Then not only are they confronted with the material before they are mature enough to deal with it, they are expected to be mature enough and have lost a large part of their support network by moving away from their parents/family etc.
The only way you can balance these two extremes properly is with a knowledge of the child involved, so enough flexibility has to be present to allow parents to make the decisions. However, some safe-guards have to be in place for parents who are negligent or simply make really bad decisions for the child and the latter is exceptionally hard to judge. There is no perfect system that can make all this work and make everyone happy, but the solution is very definitely not a technological one because we are dealing with people, not technology.
A holster or purse will hide a small gun yes, but not a high powered semi-automatic weapon. So possibility for damage is significantly reduced. Basically, picture a US high school student going nuts with a small pistol and compare the damage to when he has a big high power, semi-automatic.
If you want to trade anecdotes, how about the case where the murderer on a Long Island Commuter train was able to shoot people at will, and was reloading for the second time, before people realized that he didn't intend to stop?
That would be a good anecdote in support of gun control. Basically, you want to have guns because some guy used one to kill people.
The numbers are in, and states where people are free to arm themselves have lower crime rates.
How about looking at the official statistics released by the Australian Beaureau of Statistics that refute your claim. The fact is you cannot conclusively prove that guns either increase or decrease crime because there are always other mitigating studies in any research. The same problem exists with determining whether or not violence on TV makes children more violent.
What it really comes down to with all issues like this, gun control, free speech, abortion, violence on TV, censorship etc, is what the society decides is right for that society. What is right for the US may be wrong for Australia. Now, not every Australian will agree with all the Australian laws, but overall, the majority of Australians are happy with it. That's how a democracy works.
You may want the right to bare arms, but as a community we have decided that we don't.
No, you make the bad people stand out because they're carrying a gun. You also give me the right to walk down the street without worrying which of the people around me is suddenly going to use their gun (we rated that right as more important than the right to bear arms).
Most importantly though, you stop a lot of people from panicking and shooting someone for no good reason, thus defending the right to a fair trial. There was a very unfortunate case a while back where a couple of guys were going to a party, got the wrong house and wound up being shot because the owner thought they were theifs. They didn't respond to his warnings because they didn't speak english so they didn't understand. Perfectly innocent people assumed to be guilty and shot because they made a mistake. That and a range of other reasons is why we chose to disarm the public.
You install OS X and it comes standard.... *grin*
You're going to get a hiding from the domain name resolution committee....
bada boom, ching!
and in reply:
Apple has been successfully going out of business for about 15 years.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry..... God I hope that reply wasn't serious.
Because we all know that Apple is going out of business and all..... Have been for the past 20 years. Sigh, back to being a MS drone because then my OS will *never* become obsolete...
The last point is very difficult, it requires that you can accurately judge what people think of your opinion, how much you know about the subject and the problem at hand and whether now is an appropriate time to interject. If I'm unsure I usually keep my mouth shut until I can grab the co-worker involved when they are on their own and obviously not busy and give them my suggestion then.
If you can manage to remember those things and apply them judiciously (there is no hard and fast rules) you should gradually develop respect among your co-workers and they will start coming to you and asking for your advice when they need it as well as generally treating you as equal, because you have shown yourself to be worthy of that respect.
Finally, notice how my advice aligns with much of the advice from the 30-50 year olds here? That's because 1) their right, 2) I've been smart enough to listen to them and 3) they're the older people you want to gain respect from, so listening to them is a very good idea.
Considering the Australian Consumer Commission (the organisation that watches out for consumer rights) has stated that condition of entry signs do have merit, I would hope you have some form of evidence that your claim is correct. In lack of evidence to the contrary, I am very much inclined to believe the ACC as opposed to a random /. comment. Others should obviously seek proper legal advice on the matter.
For once that Dolphin sex link the trolls keep posting is actually on-topic.....
That may be true in America but is definitely not true in Australia (conditions apply). The conditions are that a big obvious sign is posted at the entrance to the store stating that bag searches are a condition of entry - you enter, you give them permission to search. The other restriction is that the sales assistant is not allowed to touch any of your possessions, they can ask you to open your bag and show them and open any compartment etc, but they must not do it themselves.
I would be exceptionally surprised if a similar set of laws were not in place in America and other countries around the world. I am guessing that most stores have a condition of entry, which would most likely hold up in court.
In the age-old /. tradition, IANAL.
Actually, MS don't just make office for Mac to avoid the lawyers, they make it because it makes a heck of a lot of money for them (comparatively little pirating on Macintosh so software generates far more revenue for the size of the user base). Why would MS completely recode Office and spend time making it "Mac-like" if they were just trying to please the lawyers?
Most people don't realise this but as is continuously stressed at product demos, Office:Mac is not a port of Windows and is developed by a completely separate team that is free to implement whichever features they choose. Some code is shared between the team but the product is far from being a straight port and hasn't been since Word 6 turned out to be such a flop.
They are not going to make a Office suite for Linux because they don't right now and they don't feel they have too. If Linux only has 0.24% of the market its easy to economicaly justify that. Plus there are all the other reasons they will not....
Not porting Office to Linux isn't just justifiable, doing otherwise would be economic suicide. There are very few Linux users on the desktop, even fewer of them who really need Office (most Linux users hack code, Office may be used for documentation but business users will either standardise on some other format or provide a convienient Windows box, home users are unlikely to write documentation or would just use another format).
Then, after we've narrowed down the number of users this far, look at how many Linux users would like to pay $500 (estimated US price, I'm Australian) for an Office suite? Linux users are used to getting software for free, it's part of the free software movement (part, not all - freedom is the main focus). These users would most likely either illegally obtain a copy of Office or simply do without it, further harming sales.
Microsoft isn't the only company shying away from developing commercial programs on Linux and for good reason - there is no way it can be economically justified unless the software appeals to the geeks who make up 99% of the Linux user base. Most geek software is written by geeks, for geeks and so is opensource, commercial software is more often made for the average user and so isn't worth porting to Linux.
The Slashdot "generalised mentality of contributers" wants to see:
- Software be sold outright.
- Music listening rights sold outright - buy the CD, listen to any of the tracks on it in any form, anywhere, anytime and without extra fees.
- Pay per view for television and movies.
I think I missed something here. Yes being able to call up your favorite movie at any time is a good thing, but why is it that this doesn't scream out as moving to a suscription based service instead of an ownership based service?Two possibilities are that 1) in America most people pay a subscription to television anyway (in Australia free to air TV has the stronghold atm) and 2) we already pay each time we go to the movies. The second reason is not entirely valid as when you go to the movies you go for the whole experience (wide screen, surround sound, comfy seats and a dark place to take your significant other).
What I would think would be more exciting is seeing the cost of DVDs drop to a price which makes it feasible to have a massive collection of DVDs which you can then play on demand.
Are movies and television that different to music?
For the record, I know of a number of people who have gotten good jobs (eg: developers for IBM, Sun etc) in America with an Australian IT degree, even when the job required a computer science degree.
You are completely correct and many times statements like yours have been made here on /. and in almost every place where linux is discussed. The big question is: what do we do about it?
I could create a new IRC channel that is heavily moderated so that any mention of RTFM or similar is punished and supportive comments are encouraged. Even if this turned into the most supportive and helpful channel on IRC it wouldn't solve the problem. There would still be far too many IRC channel, mailing lists, bulletin boards etc that are unsupportive and would counter act it. (There are already supportive Linux IRC channels, mailing lists etc, but noone really comments on them do they?). The same logic applies to pretty much any medium, be it a mailing list, web site, whatever.
A thought that occurs to me however is that we could set up a helpfulness ranking system and create a massive source of useful places to go for help on various linux related topics and (somehow) make it so popular that anyone who does a web search on Linux sees a reference to the site on the first link they click. So that every Linux IRC channel and web site proudly displays their newbie friendly rating (be it high or low) and so that every Linux user can find the level of tech support that they need. I think something like this might just help. The problem is I have no idea how to go about setting it up - that much web publicity (and man power to monitor the ratings) is not easy to find.
2 - Beleive everything they read in MS PR
3 - Beleive that crashes and unreliability is a fact of life and unavoidable.
4 - Are unaware of goings on in the rest of the computer world.
And these are the people who are supposed to be our future computer experts and are more knowledgable than the common joes. God help us all.
Gah! I can't handle any more! I graduated from a Bachelor of Information Technology with Advanced Studies majoring in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Griffith University (Australia) a few weeks ago and I am not some helpless weenie that has only ever used MS products.
1) I grew up using a Mac and started working on Solaris about 5 years ago. I first installed Linux about 3 years ago when I came to uni and have had some form of UNIX on one of my machines ever since. The first time I ran Windows on one of my machines was a couple of months ago so that I could get more experience at managing windows based servers (I had been providing Windows tech support to friends since primary school).
2) I do not and never have believed everything I've read in MS PR nor any other companies publications.
3) Crashes and unreliability should not be a part of any computing experience, but realistically are likely to occur. We should continue to develop better software engineering techniques to reduce the number of defects however. It is naive to think that our current Software Engineering techniques can produce defect-free software every time.
4) I am well aware of happenings in the computer world for Windows, Solaris, Linux, Mac OS, embedded devices, software engineering and a huge range of other tech related areas. Furthermore, I am an active part of these happenings through the research I am involved with.
Please don't just lump all students or recent graduates in the useless bin, some of us have been working on significant, paid and challenging projects for longer than we've been at university. Even though I may not have as much experience or knowledge as you in one area I quite likely have more knowledge in other areas of computing.
I currently work with two significantly more experienced people, one who is focused on code and has been coding for at least 10 years and one who is focused on software engineering research and design techniques. I have a reasonable amount of experience (though obviously much less than their) and we work well together by asking each other when required and generally consider each other on a level playing field. It is ludicrous to think that you know so much that you can never learn something from someone else.
So the next time you go to insult a someone because of thier apparent lack of computing knowledge try to find out what their strengths are - perhaps one day you will need a good VB developer or someone to help integrate your uber geeky UNIX-based code with a Windows client.
As a final disclaimer though, there *are* many people in the computing industry who have strength which are not in computing. Many of these are current students who originally thought the computer industry was for them, but many of them are experienced developers who failed to keep their knowledge up to date or simply never looked to gain the knowledge. The common factor is a lack of aptitude for computing, not how long they've been in the industry.
I stand corrected. Thanks to you and the other reply.
If all else fails when trying to open a document, it makes sense that the application that originally created it can open it.
This disturbs me. If I'm working on a file in one application, more often than not the next time I work on the file I want to work on it in the same application. Why then should creator code be a last ditch effort? Sure, as the article points out, it sometimes isn't what you want, but most of the time I find it is. I suppose setting the preferred order would be the best option but you do have to be careful about how much you allow users to configure an OS as configuration and difficulty go hand in hand. Having said that, configuration settings can be hidden away from the novice user but still there for the expert.
This is incorrect. The metadata that is most noticable is the way file types are recognised. The file type and creator codes were stored in the resource fork, other wise if you opened a text file in a text editor (which reads the data fork) it would have displayed the type and creator code somewhere in the document. Further more, when a Mac file is transferred to a Windows machine and back again it is not recognised by the finder as it's specific file type anymore because the Windows file system (any version or flavour) does not support resource forks and thus the metadata gets stripped.
metadata is not and never was stored in resource forks.
This is correct, however where to store the data if not in the resource fork is a challenging question. If you store it in the data fork every application must ensure that they strip out this data before attempting to use it and write it back out when it's done - forget using any of that existing Linux/BSD/UNIX software on OS X without some significant porting. Worse still, Mac file's would be 100% incompatible with every other OS because of the data. The OS could strip out the information first but then the meta-data would be lost if you compress files as the application that compresses the file wouldn't get the meta-data and it's just too prone to error. Good software engineering practice will tell you that separate applications should store their data separately whenever possible so that the effects of defects are limited.
Another option would be to use packages, but that's just nasty. A directory and two files for every file on your hard drive. It's also incompatible with other OS's, applications need to be changed to deal with it and hecne is not a viable solution.
Finally storing the meta-data in a separate file is possible, but has been highly ineffective when it has been used so far (see the Linux HFS implementation which tries this approach). Applications need to ensure that if they move or rename any file they also move or rename the meta-data file. Then you get the problem of meta-data for your meta-data files (they should be hidden and visibility is meta-data).
So when it comes down to it, the only realistic way to implement file types and creator codes is to use a resource fork, which has plenty of problems anyway. Yes, it's nice to be able to open a file by double clicking it, but since I can still do that quite happily I really can't see a problem. I'm yet to have to rename a file on OS X to give it the right extension.
Resource forks are deprecated in Mac OS X (replaced by bundles)...
Wrong on both counts actually. Resource forks are still in full use by OS X and in fact if you read Apple's documentation you will find that it recommends that you set both the file type and creator codes and the file extension. Also, bundles have never been proposed as a replacement for resource forks, they are a way of packaging Applications, Kernel Extensions and a couple of other things, but have never been intended to be used for every file on the file system as resource forks are. With Bundles you can create a GUI for your favorite command line utilities and store the command line program inside the application bundle so you always have the right version in a known location when your program runs - resource forks were designed to store supporting images, sounds etc and meta-data.
Sorensen codec (as pointed out by many other posters) is not owned or controlled by Apple. The QuickTime client cannot be ported to Linux because it includes the Sorenson codec which isn't available for Linux. Apple is making the move to MPEG-4 and it will only be at this point that a Linux client is even plausible - but then again, there's already xanim which plays QuickTime movies so why would you need a closed-source Apple client?
As for all parts of MacOS X that aren't in Darwin, some of this is because it includes code which is covered by patents owned by other companies (eg: the airport drivers) and some because Apple is in the business of making money. If they gave away their most significant marketing edge, the look and feel and superiour ease of use of their operating system they would have no marketing advantage.
Finally, the boot rom, one poster below replied that this does not exist anymore, and I would tend to agree with that as the new world macintoshes have Open Firmware but I should note that this is a hardware area that I am not familiar with. However, it is entirely possible to run other operating systems on a Macintosh, you may want to check out LinuxPPC.org as proof. That's right, Linux and FreeBSD both are available for Macintosh.
This isn't meant to bash Apple, but you seem to be claiming that they're almost completely "open source" and that's just not the case.
Noone is claiming that Apple is completely opensource, I was merely refuting the point that Apple is a proprietary company because it is simply not true any more - Apple is in fact one of the most standards complient and non-proprietary software companies out there today which isn't just selling another free software distribution. (before people point out companies like IBM who have been adopting opensource, I said one of...)
Maybe you should give your Mac classic to a local school (I know of many that are still using them quite happily for word processing and games) and buy a G4 so you can actually discover what a Mac is like *now*. Just like I went out and installed Linux years ago and got hooked on it and like I bought a PC to check out XP just recently (and got hooked on my Mac).
Basically, try out VPC again, it has come a long, long way. It doesn't even require a separate IP anymore.
Well actually, in Australia at least (and presumably in the US) we have this little law against selective punishment which states that if you are to take legal action against someone you must also take legal action against any other infrignement of the same magnitude against the right you are protecting. In other words, if you regularly let people you don't know walk through your property as a short cut then you cannot sue a specific person for taking the same short cut without showing that you are also going to persecute all future infringements. Otherwise the legal action is discriminatory and will be thrown out of court (see the case of Williams vs Thorsbourne in relation to the Port Hinchinbrook Project). Apply this to copyrights and you will find that they are only viable to the extent that they are protected.
Now, even if this law does not exist in America, the fact that it does in Australia would be enough to convince most international companies to be strict about enforcing their trademarks to save trouble in the long run. Of course, ianal...
Regardless of all this, Apple is certainly not a highly proprietary company any more. Lets take a look at some of the things they work with and sell these days and how open they are:
In fact there is very little that Apple do that is proprietary anymore. So they defend their look and feel vigourously because that's about the biggest thing that sets them apart from what others could provide. Almost everything else they do is opensource or follows widely published standards.
All in all, Apple looks like a pretty good place for an opensource advocate to find a home.
Well actually, there are other initiatives for solar power in Australia which are funded by the Australian Government. Elemental Power (a trading name of Stanwell) are running the Solar Schools project which is building solar panels in a large number of schools around Australia. The installations are subsidised both by the federal government and Stanwell.
Elemental Power is going all out to make green energy a reality in Australia, it's worth checking out their web site to see just how many green power installations there are in Queensland alone.
Which, btw, was my point. OS revisions that cost significant amounts of your local currancy should include features that warrant the upgrade. 95, 98 and ME didn't.
Well actually, I work at Griffith University which still uses Win95 right throughout most of it's staff and student computers. They have a site licence for any version of Windows but choose Win95 because it works and has worked consistenly. Why upgrade when there's no need?