Some ?!?! Vista is easily the most godawful piece of crap to ever roll out of Redmond, just when I thought I'd seen it all. If this doesn't drive people to alternatives it is an admission that they've become complete sheep (but we knew that).
It really is a pile of rubbish with a pretty ribbon (Aero) around it. There is more stability in a fresh jelly, and it's incompatible with world+dog. If you have a lot of legacy kit that uses Active-X you can't even use it in IE6 if it's unsigned (at least, I have seen no way to bypass it) so MS is again taking hardware decisions for a company, the security is designed to get in your way rather than help (even Admin has to wade through multiple clickies to get something done) and on top of that it's still as insecure as it was before - watch how often it has already been patched.
Only now there are less products available that can protect you (oh, and I have yet to see the use of Windows Defender).
The solution is IMHO easy:
Set up a small XP system with the bare essentials for what you need in Windows, then virtualise it. Zap the box, install Linux (any distro) on it and run Windows as a VM only. Safer, easier to protect and much more stable than Vista will ever e, but with significantly less draw on resources. And if Aero is what you like, install Beryl. It's been doing the Aero interface for months..
MS sells hope. Hope that bugs will eventually be solved. However, logically that will never happen, ever.
If MS can guarantee and be bonded that documents that are archived now can be accessed in 50 years time, and can be accessed and processed from today until then with software they provide for free (and I mean zero cost), well, then I agree - there's no issue.
For a democratic process to function, there should not be a price tag on public information. If the data is stored in a format for which you have to pay to access it you are in principle harming democratic process. I do realise that the opposite is harming commercial interests and I thus believe (cynic that I am) that it will take a bit more time before sponsorship of any kind (campaign contributions, golf trips, conferences in exotic places,"targeted charity") will no longer influence that vote.
In that context I find the ever increasing "yes" votes to ODF interesting - it appears that Massachusetts set in progress something of an avalanche. Give that man this years' Open Source Champion award..
A previous poster made a very good point: nobody will knock on your door until there is money involved. You MUST do the basic searches and preserve evidence that you have done so - in any case, not having bothered is not going to help you in court.
However, when that fateful letter eventually arrives you should have an idea what you want to do. There are 3 reasons why someone would get you into a patent suit:
(1) you're a threat to them, and they want to shut you down (2) you're making a profit and they want their 'protection' money (let's call the racket like it is) (3) they would like to buy you, but not at current value.
Whatever answer you decide (sell, license, close) - remember that such a suit is never started for fun, so there is an assumption that you're worth money so you are in a strong position to negotiate, even though they don't want you to realise that.
I disagree with you. I do think that a private conversation would have been better first. To use your analogy, it would be like tapping someone on the shoulder just before they decide to walk out with something under their pocket and say "I think you forgot to pay for something". If they would continue walking out, shouting 'Thief' would be appropriate, but the word 'thief' is an assumption as long as the shop has not been left.
Having said that, for Theo to start that barrage of abuse instead of calmly saying "it would have been more polite if you'd contacted me privately first but we'll sort it out" shows a personality that is pretty deficient in restraint. That is, however, not atypical in especially technical spheres, but normally you have someone with a bit more self control between those teams and mass broadcast facilities.
Now you have tempers frayed over something that otherwise a good chat over a beer would have fixed..
I think Theo's, um, verbal repertoire must have come as a bit of a surprise to you. As far as I can see your post was sternly worded, but not abusively so (and I think it always to be a bit classier if you meet abuse with a measured, unemotional response instead of replying in kind:-).
Now, why did you call this one publicly? Was it a simple mistake in the heat of the moment, to make sure whoever was coding would read it and maybe help with a solution, why?
There's no hidden agenda here, I'm simply curious. If I was in a place where I could grab the two of you by the collar and drag you into a pub where I could fill you both up with beer and get you to talk it out I'd do it, but that's sadly not the case..
We're drifting from the original point - do you really need cameras to enforce the law. Britain is uniquely saturated with cameras but the prisons are still bulging. And I can only see this stop trivial crime - another problem is that adding a camera means adding hay to the haystack making that needle you need so much harder to find. It's again technology trying to replace that most vital element of policing - the police.
No other nation has found the need to have that high a camera density, yet they haven't quite turned into complete cesspools of crime.
And as for dummies - it doesn't take long to find out which ones don't work if you add speech to them..
I remain unconvinced that cameras address the root problems - it strikes me as fighting symptoms, not causes.
I think I still have too much blood in my caffeine, no idea where I got Cicero from:-). The question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" was posed by Juvenal, but he was not the first to observe the essential problem, that was Plato when commenting on the ideal society as posed by Socrates.
I fear, however, that the noble lie Plato proposed has gone to the head of many..
I personally think that in some cases a public flogging would have been more effective then lengthy court case where people are let off because of technicalities - it creates the impression that, given enough money and/or the right friends you can get away with anything. And to some people, money doesn't mean much.
But back to cameras. Give a policeman a camcorder and he will shoot his girlfriend's ass. Ah, really. And what about him shooting YOUR girlfriends' ass? Who are you going to call? Who watches the watchers (not exactly a modern concern, if I recall it's Cicero). Rather than giving you my arguments, let's turn to the words of a real authority in this field, Bruce Schneier, and his piece in Wired called The Eternal Value of Privacy. Oh, and cameras cost money. To buy, to install, to maintain, to watch, to preserve information of. That's your tax money at work.
Well, welcome to New Labour. More keen on money than the Tories and less capable at making it. However, very, VERY good at spending it in a way that allows them to blame others (hence the vast use of expensive consultants instead of taking any personal responsibility) so when it is time for Mr Brown to explain why the UK went from having a surplus to having a large black hole of a deficit under New Labour he'll be able to claim 'bad advice'.
That's probably also how he's going to explain raising tax on what was supposed to be the funds for the UK pensions - thus killing off people's future - just so more money was available for Tony Blair to fly up and down to his US mate to discuss how they could blow more money on a war (which also converts tax money into private wealth - bombs cost money too). And to fly his wife to yet another dinner for which she could charge a fortune - for personal gain.
Oh, and as for ID cards - well, that was quite a nice scam too, so well done that even the National Audit Office didn't spot the holes (not that I think they were looking very hard).
Yeah, these are world class examples. Not like in the days where British engineering was about the most ingenuous and creative you could get and manufacturing and engineering were worth getting into. Now the French build fast trains..:-).
You know, somehow I find that having very little impact on the lives of people who don't use chewing gum.
But the potential to be kidnapped and flown away to some far away prison outside any legal system is a risk we now all run (Gitmo and the flights to other places). Or being arrested in your own country for something that is only a crime in the US (DVD Jon) - shows a great respect for the sovereignty of nations and the rights of the individual vs. big commerce. And, of course, terrorism has been with us for a long time, not in the least because at some point that nation starting the war on terrorism was involved in some creative sponsorship - only now life feels a lot less safe so hurray for a 'democracy' where someone can start a war on a lie and stay in power, but lying about a blowjob can cost you the job. Does that feel RIGHT then?
I'm not defending Singapore's record (although, you try and create a nation out of nothing), but at least Singapore doesn't pretend to be anything that it isn't.
I think you're in for a rude awakening in the UK. Cameras are not safe, they only record the fact that someone wearing a hood has just cut your belly open with a broken bottle and left you to bleed to death with your organs hanging our - rest assured the tape will be kept, but the SOLVING of such crimes is not improving at all, only the sale of hooded clothing.
Cameras also don't help if you live in a rural area where the police can't be bothered to show up if you complained too often about people threatening to kill you. Granted, weakening staircases and generally turning the place into a death trap (and shooting someone in the back) is a little bit overkill (sarcastic understatement) but I can see how someone eventually got into that state.
And, of course, camera evidence will not stop innocent people being shot by the police because they really needed to shoot someone after the tube bombings. Makes you wonder who they're trying to protect..
Ah, no, I know - those people who fall into bed if they can actually find it whilst blind drunk - assuming they haven't slipped in their own vomit first and end up another load on a totally overstretched and underfunded emergency ward (assuming an ambulance is miraculously available and can actually find them instead of following a flawed GPS unit into nowhere). For a cultural centre like London (and it is) the fascination with drinking yourself into oblivion is a bit puzzling IMHO.
Yes, it may then be a bit harder to get up as early as the Swiss do (the flip side of 10pm), but at least they know what daylight looks like.
Switching the sarcasm off, there are pros and cons to every country, but I have actually LIVED in those places I mention - I didn't just Google my opinions and looked at statistics. That naturally means the observations are subject to my personal bias (they were, after all, my opinions) - you're free to believe whatever you feel like, but don't form an opinion of a country by reading the news and the web - live there.
IMHO the state of London is best reflected in the letters to the London Metro of retired Col. Buffy. He's spot on. Although not quite as totally OTT as Jeremy Clarkson the man sums it up with clarity - and should in my opinion have his own fan club..
Oh, and next time you moan that the Tube and trains don't work - well, enjoy anarchy.
I think you may want to look at the history of Switzerland and then see if it's really that homogenous. You seem to share that lack of understanding with the EU who doesn't quite graps the idea that asking for tax standardisation (selectively - there's a strange lack of followup with other countries like Luxembourgh) is asking for this nation to forego the very basis of independent collaboration on which it is built.
And rich is a relative term - they're not all in banking and I can see quite often that both parents have to work to support a family. Quite a lot of the smaller family businesses are suffering hardship because of the climate changes.
As I said to someone else, I was talking about feeling safe only - I am well aware of the rather extravagant consequences of littering in Singapore (although I couldn't help wondering what would happen if they catch someone who's actually into this sort of thing - but I digress:).
However, granted, Singapore was a couple of years back, and I can only speak from personal experience, not from statistics..
Hong Kong wasn't so bad either, but I only stayed there briefly (repeatedly:) so I don't feel I got the feel for the place.
You're confusing matters. I said it was safe there, and it is. Maybe I should have made myself clear here - both nations mentioned are fairly safe as long as you follow the rules - and I'll get back to that in a minute.
Yes, Singapore is pretty draconian on what you and I would consider trivial matters. It's so clean it feels scary, and they are already suffering the consequences of that fairly brutal suppression - the nation lacks creativity and has to import leadership from outside. But it's also undeniably safe, which is what my point was. Maybe the fact that punishment is indeed swiftly and physically enforced without months wasted in court helps. Importantly, they don't pretend any different. They don't pretend to be a democracy and all for freedom and then offshore the beating to Guantanamo Bay and pretend that's somehow not subject to the same laws.
However, Switzerland can also feel oppressive to people that are used to the freefall that is the UK - but there is one VERY critical difference: they voted for their laws, i.e. they didn't get some stupidity foisted upon them by money and/or power grabbing entities (DCMA and the whole anti-terrorist show that is replacing communism in the US are good examples, and the UKs treatment of Orwells' 1984 as a manual rather than fiction). For an external observer like me the Swiss seem more happy to follow the law than the UK (and even the US) where every attempt to reign back the, well, idiots is met with wailing about infringements of 'rights'. Their enforcement is interesting too: you get a few gentle warnings, and if that doesn't help they come down on you like a ton of bricks. Granted, it lacks a certain subtlety but after all, you had your warnings and you're supposed to be an adult.
Here's a root problem: somehow the idea that rights needs to be balanced out with obligations has been lost. You can't ask others to function as a society unless you're prepared to follow the same rules. Classic example: freedom of speech does not cancel your obligation to pay people a basic level of respect. But that requires a bit of moral backbone, of course..
So, I go back to where I started - live in any of those cities for a few months, then take a walk at night and see how you feel. Alone in a dark street, exposed with milling crowd, past pubs, all of it (and sober, no cheating:-). If you have kids, think about them going to school on their own, not because you're too lazy to take care of them but because it's safe for them and teaches them independence in act and thinking.
I have lived quite a while in all 3 cities mentioned. There is no way on earth I'd let a young child travel on their own in London. As a matter of fact, for children Switzerland is simply without contest as the best place. Multilingual, every conceivable climate and associated physical activity, beautiful nature and, above all, an adult approach to individual responsibility. I can put up with the smaller niggles (and the chocolate and cheese is good too:-).
But that's my choice, obviously. If everyone thought the same it would be hard to get to the lake here:-).
Interesting anti-terror benefits as well - with a couple of these things in the air it's going to be real bitch to get a plane close. Unless you use what's already in the air, of course..
This is when ignorance writes newspapers. One of my colleagues was handling the command centre of a bank when the date change took place, and despite the many man hours they still had to drop emergency code into machines overnight (a literal nightmare - try doing dev/test/re-test/QA and upgrade all one after the other..
Walking alone at night in Singapore or Zurich feels a truckload safer than London. In both those places you can see kids as young as 8 travel independently (without parents) to their friends and school and walk around in freedom - I wouldn't recommend that in London either.
Yet both those nations are not so nannied and camera infested as the UK - explain?
the only difference I can see straight away is that the police in those places is (a) very available and (b) doesn't take any BS. Oh, and public transport actually works there, but I digress.
Interesting observation that affecting a "right" to drink alcohol would provoke action. That's a fascinating take on human rights:-)
Admins who don't secure corporate PCs are just lazy, stupid or both...
You're assuming two things here which aren't always true in corporate life:
1. Admins have control over all the machines on their network. That's a good theory, but even in the story above you'll find the problem to be unauthorised connections. In well managed setups that won't happen often, but it only takes one idiot to make a mess. Worse, sometimes you have an embedded system that is overlooked. Photocopiers, phone switchboards, they too have operating systems but the supplier doesn't always allow access to it as it's sold and maintained as a black box.
2. All updates can be applied immediately. Securing systems once doesn't help when the next problem comes along (with Windows, that safe timespan hovers somewhere between a few hours and a day max), but not all updates are very good for build stability. And in some cases, accreditation gets in teh way too. I have worked on Process Control systems (I'm actually at the root of a lot of teh Process Control security in a major oil company) and getting the manufacturers to agree to something like installing a simple anti-virus product is hard work (not in the least because such a beast can have a real impact on realtime performance).
Having said that, anyone jacking a laptop in without permission ought to get thrown out ASAP (it could also be considered a breach of, for instance, the UK Computer Misuse Act).
Why is it such a big deal that it's a girl? The only exceptional (and sorry) thing is that there aren't more of them. I've worked with mixed teams, and once you get the team past the mainly male side effects (takes a while) such teams work exceptionally well - not in the least because of the different perspectives.
I originally understood from the article that they did indeed do so without your permission. Otherwise it's just 'helping' you which I don't have a problem with (it's my choice to use that, after all).
However, a clarification has since been posted which makes it clear that your permission is indeed required, in which case I couldn't care less:-).
I guess I've been a bit trigger happy because we had something like this happening to us a while back, but with much more serious consequences (think 5 figure sums fraud) and I'm still amazed that things can happen on the basis of unauthenticated, unverified and non-signed emails. Sure, it was possible to roll it back because there was no way an email constituted a valid contract, but the hassle such stupidity causes is beyond belief..
Having said that, I personally witnessed negotiations for the purchase of 3 companies take place over email. To the tune of $150 million..
Slashdot Mirror
some issues still remains with Vista
Some ?!?! Vista is easily the most godawful piece of crap to ever roll out of Redmond, just when I thought I'd seen it all. If this doesn't drive people to alternatives it is an admission that they've become complete sheep (but we knew that).
It really is a pile of rubbish with a pretty ribbon (Aero) around it. There is more stability in a fresh jelly, and it's incompatible with world+dog. If you have a lot of legacy kit that uses Active-X you can't even use it in IE6 if it's unsigned (at least, I have seen no way to bypass it) so MS is again taking hardware decisions for a company, the security is designed to get in your way rather than help (even Admin has to wade through multiple clickies to get something done) and on top of that it's still as insecure as it was before - watch how often it has already been patched.
Only now there are less products available that can protect you (oh, and I have yet to see the use of Windows Defender).
The solution is IMHO easy:
Set up a small XP system with the bare essentials for what you need in Windows, then virtualise it. Zap the box, install Linux (any distro) on it and run Windows as a VM only. Safer, easier to protect and much more stable than Vista will ever e, but with significantly less draw on resources. And if Aero is what you like, install Beryl. It's been doing the Aero interface for months..
MS sells hope. Hope that bugs will eventually be solved. However, logically that will never happen, ever.
Who would buy the upgrades?
First you get the heat, then you get the breaking of the box seal so the oil vapourises - and at that point it can ignite. Enjoy
I mean, that bill is an original work (in more ways than one), so for the proposals to be written they'd have to use parts of that bill..
:-)
(only jesting, but the idea was fun
If MS can guarantee and be bonded that documents that are archived now can be accessed in 50 years time, and can be accessed and processed from today until then with software they provide for free (and I mean zero cost), well, then I agree - there's no issue.
For a democratic process to function, there should not be a price tag on public information. If the data is stored in a format for which you have to pay to access it you are in principle harming democratic process. I do realise that the opposite is harming commercial interests and I thus believe (cynic that I am) that it will take a bit more time before sponsorship of any kind (campaign contributions, golf trips, conferences in exotic places,"targeted charity") will no longer influence that vote.
In that context I find the ever increasing "yes" votes to ODF interesting - it appears that Massachusetts set in progress something of an avalanche. Give that man this years' Open Source Champion award..
No comments needed - you all know the score..
A previous poster made a very good point: nobody will knock on your door until there is money involved. You MUST do the basic searches and preserve evidence that you have done so - in any case, not having bothered is not going to help you in court.
However, when that fateful letter eventually arrives you should have an idea what you want to do. There are 3 reasons why someone would get you into a patent suit:
(1) you're a threat to them, and they want to shut you down
(2) you're making a profit and they want their 'protection' money (let's call the racket like it is)
(3) they would like to buy you, but not at current value.
Whatever answer you decide (sell, license, close) - remember that such a suit is never started for fun, so there is an assumption that you're worth money so you are in a strong position to negotiate, even though they don't want you to realise that.
Good luck!
I disagree with you. I do think that a private conversation would have been better first. To use your analogy, it would be like tapping someone on the shoulder just before they decide to walk out with something under their pocket and say "I think you forgot to pay for something". If they would continue walking out, shouting 'Thief' would be appropriate, but the word 'thief' is an assumption as long as the shop has not been left.
Having said that, for Theo to start that barrage of abuse instead of calmly saying "it would have been more polite if you'd contacted me privately first but we'll sort it out" shows a personality that is pretty deficient in restraint. That is, however, not atypical in especially technical spheres, but normally you have someone with a bit more self control between those teams and mass broadcast facilities.
Now you have tempers frayed over something that otherwise a good chat over a beer would have fixed..
I think Theo's, um, verbal repertoire must have come as a bit of a surprise to you. As far as I can see your post was sternly worded, but not abusively so (and I think it always to be a bit classier if you meet abuse with a measured, unemotional response instead of replying in kind :-).
Now, why did you call this one publicly? Was it a simple mistake in the heat of the moment, to make sure whoever was coding would read it and maybe help with a solution, why?
There's no hidden agenda here, I'm simply curious. If I was in a place where I could grab the two of you by the collar and drag you into a pub where I could fill you both up with beer and get you to talk it out I'd do it, but that's sadly not the case..
We're drifting from the original point - do you really need cameras to enforce the law. Britain is uniquely saturated with cameras but the prisons are still bulging. And I can only see this stop trivial crime - another problem is that adding a camera means adding hay to the haystack making that needle you need so much harder to find. It's again technology trying to replace that most vital element of policing - the police.
No other nation has found the need to have that high a camera density, yet they haven't quite turned into complete cesspools of crime.
And as for dummies - it doesn't take long to find out which ones don't work if you add speech to them..
I remain unconvinced that cameras address the root problems - it strikes me as fighting symptoms, not causes.
I think I still have too much blood in my caffeine, no idea where I got Cicero from :-). The question "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" was posed by Juvenal, but he was not the first to observe the essential problem, that was Plato when commenting on the ideal society as posed by Socrates.
I fear, however, that the noble lie Plato proposed has gone to the head of many..
But back to cameras. Give a policeman a camcorder and he will shoot his girlfriend's ass. Ah, really. And what about him shooting YOUR girlfriends' ass? Who are you going to call? Who watches the watchers (not exactly a modern concern, if I recall it's Cicero). Rather than giving you my arguments, let's turn to the words of a real authority in this field, Bruce Schneier, and his piece in Wired called The Eternal Value of Privacy. Oh, and cameras cost money. To buy, to install, to maintain, to watch, to preserve information of. That's your tax money at work.
Poverty?
:-).
Well, welcome to New Labour. More keen on money than the Tories and less capable at making it. However, very, VERY good at spending it in a way that allows them to blame others (hence the vast use of expensive consultants instead of taking any personal responsibility) so when it is time for Mr Brown to explain why the UK went from having a surplus to having a large black hole of a deficit under New Labour he'll be able to claim 'bad advice'.
That's probably also how he's going to explain raising tax on what was supposed to be the funds for the UK pensions - thus killing off people's future - just so more money was available for Tony Blair to fly up and down to his US mate to discuss how they could blow more money on a war (which also converts tax money into private wealth - bombs cost money too). And to fly his wife to yet another dinner for which she could charge a fortune - for personal gain.
Oh, and as for ID cards - well, that was quite a nice scam too, so well done that even the National Audit Office didn't spot the holes (not that I think they were looking very hard).
Yeah, these are world class examples. Not like in the days where British engineering was about the most ingenuous and creative you could get and manufacturing and engineering were worth getting into. Now the French build fast trains..
You know, somehow I find that having very little impact on the lives of people who don't use chewing gum.
But the potential to be kidnapped and flown away to some far away prison outside any legal system is a risk we now all run (Gitmo and the flights to other places). Or being arrested in your own country for something that is only a crime in the US (DVD Jon) - shows a great respect for the sovereignty of nations and the rights of the individual vs. big commerce. And, of course, terrorism has been with us for a long time, not in the least because at some point that nation starting the war on terrorism was involved in some creative sponsorship - only now life feels a lot less safe so hurray for a 'democracy' where someone can start a war on a lie and stay in power, but lying about a blowjob can cost you the job. Does that feel RIGHT then?
I'm not defending Singapore's record (although, you try and create a nation out of nothing), but at least Singapore doesn't pretend to be anything that it isn't.
Note to self: obviously not offensive enough. :-)
Cameras also don't help if you live in a rural area where the police can't be bothered to show up if you complained too often about people threatening to kill you. Granted, weakening staircases and generally turning the place into a death trap (and shooting someone in the back) is a little bit overkill (sarcastic understatement) but I can see how someone eventually got into that state.
And, of course, camera evidence will not stop innocent people being shot by the police because they really needed to shoot someone after the tube bombings. Makes you wonder who they're trying to protect..
Ah, no, I know - those people who fall into bed if they can actually find it whilst blind drunk - assuming they haven't slipped in their own vomit first and end up another load on a totally overstretched and underfunded emergency ward (assuming an ambulance is miraculously available and can actually find them instead of following a flawed GPS unit into nowhere). For a cultural centre like London (and it is) the fascination with drinking yourself into oblivion is a bit puzzling IMHO.
Yes, it may then be a bit harder to get up as early as the Swiss do (the flip side of 10pm), but at least they know what daylight looks like.
Switching the sarcasm off, there are pros and cons to every country, but I have actually LIVED in those places I mention - I didn't just Google my opinions and looked at statistics. That naturally means the observations are subject to my personal bias (they were, after all, my opinions) - you're free to believe whatever you feel like, but don't form an opinion of a country by reading the news and the web - live there.
IMHO the state of London is best reflected in the letters to the London Metro of retired Col. Buffy. He's spot on. Although not quite as totally OTT as Jeremy Clarkson the man sums it up with clarity - and should in my opinion have his own fan club..
Oh, and next time you moan that the Tube and trains don't work - well, enjoy anarchy.
And rich is a relative term - they're not all in banking and I can see quite often that both parents have to work to support a family. Quite a lot of the smaller family businesses are suffering hardship because of the climate changes.
As I said to someone else, I was talking about feeling safe only - I am well aware of the rather extravagant consequences of littering in Singapore (although I couldn't help wondering what would happen if they catch someone who's actually into this sort of thing - but I digress :).
However, granted, Singapore was a couple of years back, and I can only speak from personal experience, not from statistics..
Hong Kong wasn't so bad either, but I only stayed there briefly (repeatedly :) so I don't feel I got the feel for the place.
Yes, Singapore is pretty draconian on what you and I would consider trivial matters. It's so clean it feels scary, and they are already suffering the consequences of that fairly brutal suppression - the nation lacks creativity and has to import leadership from outside. But it's also undeniably safe, which is what my point was. Maybe the fact that punishment is indeed swiftly and physically enforced without months wasted in court helps. Importantly, they don't pretend any different. They don't pretend to be a democracy and all for freedom and then offshore the beating to Guantanamo Bay and pretend that's somehow not subject to the same laws.
However, Switzerland can also feel oppressive to people that are used to the freefall that is the UK - but there is one VERY critical difference: they voted for their laws, i.e. they didn't get some stupidity foisted upon them by money and/or power grabbing entities (DCMA and the whole anti-terrorist show that is replacing communism in the US are good examples, and the UKs treatment of Orwells' 1984 as a manual rather than fiction). For an external observer like me the Swiss seem more happy to follow the law than the UK (and even the US) where every attempt to reign back the, well, idiots is met with wailing about infringements of 'rights'. Their enforcement is interesting too: you get a few gentle warnings, and if that doesn't help they come down on you like a ton of bricks. Granted, it lacks a certain subtlety but after all, you had your warnings and you're supposed to be an adult.
Here's a root problem: somehow the idea that rights needs to be balanced out with obligations has been lost. You can't ask others to function as a society unless you're prepared to follow the same rules. Classic example: freedom of speech does not cancel your obligation to pay people a basic level of respect. But that requires a bit of moral backbone, of course..
So, I go back to where I started - live in any of those cities for a few months, then take a walk at night and see how you feel. Alone in a dark street, exposed with milling crowd, past pubs, all of it (and sober, no cheating
I have lived quite a while in all 3 cities mentioned. There is no way on earth I'd let a young child travel on their own in London. As a matter of fact, for children Switzerland is simply without contest as the best place. Multilingual, every conceivable climate and associated physical activity, beautiful nature and, above all, an adult approach to individual responsibility. I can put up with the smaller niggles (and the chocolate and cheese is good too
But that's my choice, obviously. If everyone thought the same it would be hard to get to the lake here
Interesting anti-terror benefits as well - with a couple of these things in the air it's going to be real bitch to get a plane close. Unless you use what's already in the air, of course..
This is when ignorance writes newspapers. One of my colleagues was handling the command centre of a bank when the date change took place, and despite the many man hours they still had to drop emergency code into machines overnight (a literal nightmare - try doing dev/test/re-test/QA and upgrade all one after the other..
Walking alone at night in Singapore or Zurich feels a truckload safer than London. In both those places you can see kids as young as 8 travel independently (without parents) to their friends and school and walk around in freedom - I wouldn't recommend that in London either.
:-)
Yet both those nations are not so nannied and camera infested as the UK - explain?
the only difference I can see straight away is that the police in those places is (a) very available and (b) doesn't take any BS. Oh, and public transport actually works there, but I digress.
Interesting observation that affecting a "right" to drink alcohol would provoke action. That's a fascinating take on human rights
Call quality over Vonage has dramatically declined in the last few weeks, I guess this explains it..
.. it is still considered a small miracle if a train actually appears, let alone be on time.
Admins who don't secure corporate PCs are just lazy, stupid or both...
You're assuming two things here which aren't always true in corporate life:
1. Admins have control over all the machines on their network. That's a good theory, but even in the story above you'll find the problem to be unauthorised connections. In well managed setups that won't happen often, but it only takes one idiot to make a mess. Worse, sometimes you have an embedded system that is overlooked. Photocopiers, phone switchboards, they too have operating systems but the supplier doesn't always allow access to it as it's sold and maintained as a black box.
2. All updates can be applied immediately. Securing systems once doesn't help when the next problem comes along (with Windows, that safe timespan hovers somewhere between a few hours and a day max), but not all updates are very good for build stability. And in some cases, accreditation gets in teh way too. I have worked on Process Control systems (I'm actually at the root of a lot of teh Process Control security in a major oil company) and getting the manufacturers to agree to something like installing a simple anti-virus product is hard work (not in the least because such a beast can have a real impact on realtime performance).
Having said that, anyone jacking a laptop in without permission ought to get thrown out ASAP (it could also be considered a breach of, for instance, the UK Computer Misuse Act).
Sorry, no snide remarks here.
Why is it such a big deal that it's a girl? The only exceptional (and sorry) thing is that there aren't more of them. I've worked with mixed teams, and once you get the team past the mainly male side effects (takes a while) such teams work exceptionally well - not in the least because of the different perspectives.
I originally understood from the article that they did indeed do so without your permission.
:-).
Otherwise it's just 'helping' you which I don't have a problem with (it's my choice to use that, after all).
However, a clarification has since been posted which makes it clear that your permission is indeed required, in which case I couldn't care less
I guess I've been a bit trigger happy because we had something like this happening to us a while back, but with much more serious consequences (think 5 figure sums fraud) and I'm still amazed that things can happen on the basis of unauthenticated, unverified and non-signed emails. Sure, it was possible to roll it back because there was no way an email constituted a valid contract, but the hassle such stupidity causes is beyond belief..
Having said that, I personally witnessed negotiations for the purchase of 3 companies take place over email. To the tune of $150 million..
[shakes head in disbelief]