I'm not going to have a wake when I die, but if I did, I would certainly leave instructions to have these implanted to scare the crap out of the people that came.
That's true, but unlike previous presidents, he specifically called out non-believers as being a part of the country just like Christians, Muslims, etc. in his inaugural address. Contrast this with Bush Sr. who said that atheists shouldn't even be considered citizens of the US. This gives me hope.
I've now seen more than a few examples of linking to a "YouTube Video" where the site looks exactly like YouTube, but the video window contains an Active X control, and the URL is definitely not youtube.com. I only noticed because we're on Macs here and Firefox asked me if I wanted to download the plugin to view the content.
This is by far one of the best comments I've ever read on this subject. I'm personally an atheist, but even though I don't believe in a god, I don't have a problem with people doing so, as long as they don't interfere with the lives of others.
What I never understood was exactly what you've outlined: how religious people can't just say, "Yeah, god created evolution, how elegant! Praise him!". If they did this there would never be a controversy, until of course we do find out all the answers, and then they're screwed:)
I was the victim of identity theft about 6 years ago. It took me literally 2 years to clear my name. That's 2 years of making long distance phone calls, tracking down the right people, emailing, photocopying birth certificates and licenses, making police reports, etc, etc. All the while I was looked at with suspicion and I basically had to prove my innocence!
Whose fault was it that my identity was stolen? That would be the credit bureaus and the credit card companies that allowed it to happen, not me. It is their system that is at fault for allowing people to steal identities so easily. So why am I responsible to clean up their mess? If I have marks on my credit report, I should be able to tell the bureaus and that should be the end of it. I think restitution is the least they can do.
I do a weekly Drum and Bass radio show on kunninmindz.com. This "feature" decided to make itself known to me a couple of weeks back when it wanted to reboot the machine in the middle of my radio show. My setup has the computer in the other room from my DJ setup, so I was throwing up a few records then running into the other room to check on it every 10 minutes. Took me about an hour of this until it occurred to me I could temporarily turn off automatic updates.
Because "it may not work" may also mean it will hose your system. I don't use Windows that often here except for doing music stuff, but one time I had a disk with Easy CD Creator on it. I wanted to use my CD burner and I figured I could just install that and be done with it.
When I started the installer, it popped up a dialog box which said "This program is not designed for your operating system and may experience problems" (it was designed for Windows95 BTW and I was on 2000). I figured it wouldn't be a problem so I clicked "yes". After I rebooted, my system totally BSODed right on startup. It turned out that the installer installed a device driver for some "easy burn" option or something, and that hosed my system. I was able to boot into safe mode and disable the driver, but I don't think your average user would know how to do that.
They probably figure that it would save them tons of support calls.
When I went to high school in the late 80's, the "shop" classes were the ones that the "bad kids" went to. You learned woodworking, how to work on cars, technical drawing, etc. There was and still is a separate vocational high school (only for the "really bad" kids of course). That this seems to be stigmatized is completely backwards, as these skills are not only important, they are indispensable. There is a segment of the population that may not be gifted by the school's definition, but give them some wood and they can make a beautiful piece of furniture. Give them a wrench and they can fix your b-mer.
In the future I think we will find that though we might have a "real" job as some engineer, hiring that plumber or auto mechanic suddenly costs a lot more than it used to. Maybe then those jobs won't be just for the "bad kids".
I manage a pretty high volume medical related website which is 100% fully XHTML compliant. There are a few ASP.NET application on the site which do not validate, though when we move to ASP.NET 2.0 they finally will (don't get me started on ASP.NET and standards please. I didn't choose the tech). We've done this for a number of reasons, but the main ones are:
- The site uses CSS for layout purposes. This has been tested in all major browsers and downgrades gracefully. If the HTML is not valid, the CSS can go bonkers in some browsers, having the site valid means we know that the testing we did before will hold true for new pages, as long as we stick to the predefined HTML elements we tested.
- Having every page on the site be XML means we can use all the standard XML tools on the pages, such as XSL to push the content into different formats, or DOM or XPATH to pull content from the pages for any number of reasons. You could do this with regex or some HTML parser, but having it be valid XML makes this infinitely simpler.
- Lastly...if you don't even have the attention to detail to even be running the HTML Validator extension and glance down at the little icon in the corner as you write pages, then you won't ever work for me. It's really not so hard.
OK, I've been a Debian user since 2000, and an Ubuntu user for a couple of months now. I just want to say that I installed Ubuntu for the first time and I didn't need to configure anything at all...nothing. I mean, *everything* worked: my digital camera, printer, iPod...everything. I never edited any config files. The only thing I did was configure my printer through Gnome. To play multimedia files, I did a quick Google search, like "ubuntu play dvd" and got step by step instructions on how to download the right packages and information about why it wasn't enabled by default (legal issues).
Now, I would say I'm an advanced Linux user for sure, but I didn't need to know anything like that to use Ubuntu. I'm not saying that Linux doesn't have issues, but I think a good deal of them depend entirely on what hardware you are using and the rest are rapidly disappearing. BTW, my hardware is a Dell Precision Workstation 410, with a Matrox G400 video card, not a Vaio.
I use apt at the command line as well, but you could install OO using the 100% GUI package manager synaptic:
- Launch synaptic - Type in root password in the prompt - Edit->find and type in openoffice or browse for it in the menu - Select openoffice.org - Click apply
When I click on openoffice in the menu, the description at the bottom says:
You can extend the functionality of OpenOffice.org by installing these packages:...
* menu: Will add openoffice.org menu entries for every Debian window manager
The apt sources containing openoffice are configured when I installed Debian. I assume this would be the same for more "easy to install" Debian based distributions.
I actually wrote a letter to get on the Direct Marketing Association do-not-call list that exists right now. After about 2 months the number of calls was like a 1/4 of what they were. After that, I picked up every call and told them to put me on their do not call list. Oddly, almost every telemarketer that I said this to would politely say "OK, you can expect calls to cease within 3 weeks" or something like that.
I get about 1 call every couple of months now from a telemarketer, and it's usually from like the local paper or something. It's a huge relief.
A bunch of folks have already started working on xpde. It aims to be a "transitional" window manager to give people an easier time moving to Linux from from Windows. It's basically a Windows look-alike, but instead of being the end-all like the Microsoft idea, it's meant to give people something that simply looks like windows, so they can get past desktop-shock.
I was the victim of ID theft. You do not want this to happen to you. Ever. It involves filing police reports, calling every company that showed up on your credit reports and providing all kinds of info to their fraud departments. It took me over a year and a half of phone calls, faxes and emails to straighten everything out. I'm still getting calls from creditors about unpaid credit cards and such that clearly aren't mine.
I think it's obvious that if the only thing between theives and your identity is your mom's maiden name, your address, and your SS number, that it's been made pretty freakin' easy for them.(Granted it's not quite that simple, but it's damn close)
One thing that struck me throughout the entire process of cleaning up my credit reports was that I was doing the cleaning up. Here are 3 companies that basically control whether you can ever buy a house, and when they screw up and allow someone to assume your identity using their services, it's the victim that's left picking up the pieces.
Maybe this is common knowledge, I don't know, but my buddy told me that some CDRs created with a Mac contain the desktopDB file which has human readable strings in it where some apps store info. Sure enough I looked at a disk sent to me by a Mac user and the file contained email addresses and such from his email client.
A friend of mine who was an Industrial Design major had quite a few problems with his professer when he did his design drawings using a computer, but I think his professer wanted him to learn to do technical drawings with traditional mediums. I think that's totally valid.
An earlier posting mentioned Salvidor Dali, but I'll use Picasso as an example. Picasso's early art was very much traditional fine art. It was only later that he began working abstractly. The problem is that starting to work abstractly from the get-go can lead to the artist missing out on some very important techniques applicable to all forms of art.
If you are at the point where you have mastered those techniques and want to expand into using art created on a computer, then I think you will find that the art world will accept it, even if your professers don't
I know that the IT guy at my office was looking into Netegrity's Siteminder product. It seems to be centralized more on web application, and I know it does cost, but it might be what you need.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not going to have a wake when I die, but if I did, I would certainly leave instructions to have these implanted to scare the crap out of the people that came.
That's true, but unlike previous presidents, he specifically called out non-believers as being a part of the country just like Christians, Muslims, etc. in his inaugural address. Contrast this with Bush Sr. who said that atheists shouldn't even be considered citizens of the US. This gives me hope.
I've now seen more than a few examples of linking to a "YouTube Video" where the site looks exactly like YouTube, but the video window contains an Active X control, and the URL is definitely not youtube.com. I only noticed because we're on Macs here and Firefox asked me if I wanted to download the plugin to view the content.
This is by far one of the best comments I've ever read on this subject. I'm personally an atheist, but even though I don't believe in a god, I don't have a problem with people doing so, as long as they don't interfere with the lives of others.
What I never understood was exactly what you've outlined: how religious people can't just say, "Yeah, god created evolution, how elegant! Praise him!". If they did this there would never be a controversy, until of course we do find out all the answers, and then they're screwed :)
I was the victim of identity theft about 6 years ago. It took me literally 2 years to clear my name. That's 2 years of making long distance phone calls, tracking down the right people, emailing, photocopying birth certificates and licenses, making police reports, etc, etc. All the while I was looked at with suspicion and I basically had to prove my innocence!
Whose fault was it that my identity was stolen? That would be the credit bureaus and the credit card companies that allowed it to happen, not me. It is their system that is at fault for allowing people to steal identities so easily. So why am I responsible to clean up their mess? If I have marks on my credit report, I should be able to tell the bureaus and that should be the end of it. I think restitution is the least they can do.
I do a weekly Drum and Bass radio show on kunninmindz.com. This "feature" decided to make itself known to me a couple of weeks back when it wanted to reboot the machine in the middle of my radio show. My setup has the computer in the other room from my DJ setup, so I was throwing up a few records then running into the other room to check on it every 10 minutes. Took me about an hour of this until it occurred to me I could temporarily turn off automatic updates.
Really boneheaded design decision on their part!
Here's one method:
http://alistapart.com/articles/holygrail
Here's another:
http://www.glish.com/css/7.asp
But yeah, it's hard. Lot's of people have found solutions to the problems, though. Even if it is cumbersome, I think it's better than visual markup.
Because "it may not work" may also mean it will hose your system. I don't use Windows that often here except for doing music stuff, but one time I had a disk with Easy CD Creator on it. I wanted to use my CD burner and I figured I could just install that and be done with it.
When I started the installer, it popped up a dialog box which said "This program is not designed for your operating system and may experience problems" (it was designed for Windows95 BTW and I was on 2000). I figured it wouldn't be a problem so I clicked "yes". After I rebooted, my system totally BSODed right on startup. It turned out that the installer installed a device driver for some "easy burn" option or something, and that hosed my system. I was able to boot into safe mode and disable the driver, but I don't think your average user would know how to do that.
They probably figure that it would save them tons of support calls.
When I went to high school in the late 80's, the "shop" classes were the ones that the "bad kids" went to. You learned woodworking, how to work on cars, technical drawing, etc. There was and still is a separate vocational high school (only for the "really bad" kids of course). That this seems to be stigmatized is completely backwards, as these skills are not only important, they are indispensable. There is a segment of the population that may not be gifted by the school's definition, but give them some wood and they can make a beautiful piece of furniture. Give them a wrench and they can fix your b-mer.
In the future I think we will find that though we might have a "real" job as some engineer, hiring that plumber or auto mechanic suddenly costs a lot more than it used to. Maybe then those jobs won't be just for the "bad kids".
I manage a pretty high volume medical related website which is 100% fully XHTML compliant. There are a few ASP.NET application on the site which do not validate, though when we move to ASP.NET 2.0 they finally will (don't get me started on ASP.NET and standards please. I didn't choose the tech). We've done this for a number of reasons, but the main ones are:
- The site uses CSS for layout purposes. This has been tested in all major browsers and downgrades gracefully. If the HTML is not valid, the CSS can go bonkers in some browsers, having the site valid means we know that the testing we did before will hold true for new pages, as long as we stick to the predefined HTML elements we tested.
- Having every page on the site be XML means we can use all the standard XML tools on the pages, such as XSL to push the content into different formats, or DOM or XPATH to pull content from the pages for any number of reasons. You could do this with regex or some HTML parser, but having it be valid XML makes this infinitely simpler.
- Lastly...if you don't even have the attention to detail to even be running the HTML Validator extension and glance down at the little icon in the corner as you write pages, then you won't ever work for me. It's really not so hard.
OK, I've been a Debian user since 2000, and an Ubuntu user for a couple of months now. I just want to say that I installed Ubuntu for the first time and I didn't need to configure anything at all...nothing. I mean, *everything* worked: my digital camera, printer, iPod...everything. I never edited any config files. The only thing I did was configure my printer through Gnome. To play multimedia files, I did a quick Google search, like "ubuntu play dvd" and got step by step instructions on how to download the right packages and information about why it wasn't enabled by default (legal issues).
Now, I would say I'm an advanced Linux user for sure, but I didn't need to know anything like that to use Ubuntu. I'm not saying that Linux doesn't have issues, but I think a good deal of them depend entirely on what hardware you are using and the rest are rapidly disappearing. BTW, my hardware is a Dell Precision Workstation 410, with a Matrox G400 video card, not a Vaio.
What about Greek Fire?
I use apt at the command line as well, but you could install OO using the 100% GUI package manager synaptic:
...
- Launch synaptic
- Type in root password in the prompt
- Edit->find and type in openoffice or browse for it in the menu
- Select openoffice.org
- Click apply
When I click on openoffice in the menu, the description at the bottom says:
You can extend the functionality of OpenOffice.org by installing these
packages:
* menu: Will add openoffice.org menu entries for every Debian window manager
The apt sources containing openoffice are configured when I installed Debian. I assume this would be the same for more "easy to install" Debian based distributions.
I can't believe I'm the only one that didn't blow up his sister's My Little Ponies with powdered Estes D engines when they were a kid....
This totally works.
I actually wrote a letter to get on the Direct Marketing Association do-not-call list that exists right now. After about 2 months the number of calls was like a 1/4 of what they were. After that, I picked up every call and told them to put me on their do not call list. Oddly, almost every telemarketer that I said this to would politely say "OK, you can expect calls to cease within 3 weeks" or something like that.
I get about 1 call every couple of months now from a telemarketer, and it's usually from like the local paper or something. It's a huge relief.
Direct Marketing Association
1-888-777-3406
DMA Telephone Preference Service
P.O. Box 1559
Carmel, NY 10512
A bunch of folks have already started working on xpde. It aims to be a "transitional" window manager to give people an easier time moving to Linux from from Windows. It's basically a Windows look-alike, but instead of being the end-all like the Microsoft idea, it's meant to give people something that simply looks like windows, so they can get past desktop-shock.
I was the victim of ID theft. You do not want this to happen to you. Ever. It involves filing police reports, calling every company that showed up on your credit reports and providing all kinds of info to their fraud departments. It took me over a year and a half of phone calls, faxes and emails to straighten everything out. I'm still getting calls from creditors about unpaid credit cards and such that clearly aren't mine.
I think it's obvious that if the only thing between theives and your identity is your mom's maiden name, your address, and your SS number, that it's been made pretty freakin' easy for them.(Granted it's not quite that simple, but it's damn close)
One thing that struck me throughout the entire process of cleaning up my credit reports was that I was doing the cleaning up. Here are 3 companies that basically control whether you can ever buy a house, and when they screw up and allow someone to assume your identity using their services, it's the victim that's left picking up the pieces.
Also:
Maybe this is common knowledge, I don't know, but my buddy told me that some CDRs created with a Mac contain the desktopDB file which has human readable strings in it where some apps store info. Sure enough I looked at a disk sent to me by a Mac user and the file contained email addresses and such from his email client.
...Gibson ever won a hugo.
At my office we have 2 file servers, yet every day, employees email each other documents to proofread, files to view, etc.
Pretty soon there are 10 copies of a document flying around all with incremental changes, not to mention everyone has their own private copy.
People at our clients offices seem to think that it's fine to send 5 meg email attachments, when we have an FTP server for just that purpose!
A friend of mine who was an Industrial Design major had quite a few problems with his professer when he did his design drawings using a computer, but I think his professer wanted him to learn to do technical drawings with traditional mediums. I think that's totally valid.
An earlier posting mentioned Salvidor Dali, but I'll use Picasso as an example. Picasso's early art was very much traditional fine art. It was only later that he began working abstractly. The problem is that starting to work abstractly from the get-go can lead to the artist missing out on some very important techniques applicable to all forms of art.
If you are at the point where you have mastered those techniques and want to expand into using art created on a computer, then I think you will find that the art world will accept it, even if your professers don't
I know that the IT guy at my office was looking into Netegrity's Siteminder product. It seems to be centralized more on web application, and I know it does cost, but it might be what you need.