No, I can't say I've had many of those problems on my linux boxes. Plenty of them in windoze though. What a pain in the ass to do even basic things in that horrid UI!
and you know what? It's not the 'hackers' that these people have to fear. It's corporations, with all of their damned spyware, pop up ads, pop under ads, spam spam spam and more spam. THESE are the things lusers need to be concerned about.
Hell, the 'hackers' are their best ally in this, being against all of this bullshit that happens and trying to do something about it. The general public has their fears targeted entirely wrong, and if they ever wake up the 'underground' will finally be able to make some good progress.
By definition, the type of stuff being shoved down users throats these days is about the only form of 'cyber-terrorism' in existence (theft of service, in your face ads for pornography, drugs, viruses to ensure they continue, illigitimate use of net messages on windoze boxes, etc). Why isn't the federal government doing something about it?
wvdial. There are also GUIs for this (most of them use wvdial as the back end... wmppp, gppp-wvdial, gppp-wrap, etc). It just works (unless your idiot ISP or business uses a shiva with SPAP, then you are screwed no matter what you try to use if it is non-M$).
Any site that is going to use an 'internal' login (ie, not auth'd by the webserver, but by your backend database) must use cookies. My cycling team calendar I wrote does this, and I have always on the login page stated that cookies are needed for the site to work, and what the cookies are used for. What's the big deal?
This is called "inverse design" and was a hot topic when I was still in school(BS, Aerospace, 1993). It is the focus of CFD (computational fluid dynamics). You can tell the program what type of lift profile you want, and the computer would then design your wing, for example.
We did something like x-plane does as a semester-long project. Of course, our programs only did control derivitaves, and not in real time. We used a 'lifting surface' model, modelling votex sheets, as illustrated in Dr. David Barnes's book (who also happened to be the class instructor, imagine that).
Blocking? How about just not running the shit in the first place?!? Oh yeah, I forgot. Microsoft. You're lucky to even know what you are running at any given time, let alone even be ABLE to turn off the 'unnecessary' service that 30 other pieces of windoze seems to require, only on localhost, mind you, but by golly lets open it to the world for kicks!
If software were properly engineered, it would have far less 'bugs'. You don't see any other discipline like this. An engineer doesn't build a bridge/airplane/car/elevator/building any which way and then say "let's see how it works!" Oops, fell apart...repeat. No, they understand materials science, they do preliminary designs/tests/models, they analyze their design, they make sure their calculations are correct, and THEN they build. Computer programmers today do it as a totally backwards clusterfuck. It doesn't help that the tools they use are not properly engineered either (libraries, etc).
anti-virus software is pretty much useless. Viruses are a *SOCIAL* problem, not a technical one. In fact, I'd say that anti-virus software itself can be just as damaging to using your machine as any virus..note anybody whose virus scanning is set to paranoid, going through its thousands of hashes on every single file read/write.
How about not installing it by default, but having it on a separate CD, which may or may not include mozilla/netscape alternatives? Or an icon on the desktop that says 'Install browser' which would then give the user a choice of browsers to install, and it would then get that choice from the 'net and install?
How about a simplistic modem you can plug into the phone outlet so you can have callerid overlaid on your TV for incoming calls? Or notifications of friends/etc logging onto IM or IRC servers, and the ability to 'page' you?
Following up on my own post, if all U.S. citizens thought like this guy, we really would be in trouble, as nobody in this country would even HAVE the skills necessary to do anything with high technology, instead encouraging companies to whore out our tech to other countries that are actually progressing with the technology we gave them as a foot in the door.
the veteran programmer is urging his 18-year-old nephew to stay in suburban Chicago and is discouraging him from pursuing degrees in computer science or engineering.
"I told him, 'Unless you're planning to do this as a path to technical sales, don't do it,"' said Kerrigan, who lives in Oakland. "He won't be able to have a career designing and building stuff because all those jobs have moved to India."
That's a pretty dumb reason to not pursue a programming/engineering degree. I studied Aerospace, mainly because I was interested in how airplanes and rockets and all of that other cool stuff work. Getting a job out of it would have been nice, but I tend to think my career path in IT has been more rewarding. I do not regret my education, despite not using it directly. It taught me stuff I wanted to know, that I could NEVER possibly hope to learn on my own.
In short, discouraging someone from pursuing a degree in something that interestes them, just because "You won't get a job doing that" is a pretty dismal outlook on the whole point of a higher education.
Spam is a cost effective, if obnoxious, solution for advertising.
I'd agree with your post except for the fact that spammers forge their addresses, hijack open relays, bounce their reply-to addresses, etc (seems silly that if I really wanted their product, I have no way to get in touch with them...). If these guys used real addresses on their OWN servers, then they might be able to legitimately call it 'marketing' or 'advertising'
I don't think marketing via email would be quite as offensive if these guys were prosecuted for fraud, and if they had real ways to opt-out (of course, an opt-in only system is preferable).
Get the fsckers on fraud, and make it a federal offense and most of the problem goes away immediately.
Seems the perceived problem is 'dead' links. Isn't an archive of NEWS of all things a GOOD thing??? Sometimes you want to see the old/original version of whatever.
I do this all the time so that I can quake but also check gaim / IRC messages as they come in, without having to stop the game. Lessee, where's that link...ah here it is:
http://freefall.homeip.net/stuff/quakescript/
So I guess you don't like bumper-cars at amusement parks either? Why does the p.s. have to be onboard? Electric trains, trollies, maglev, whatever. There are practical uses.
Even more disturbing is stations putting a "G" rating on religious shows on television. If ANYTHING requires parental guidance, it is religious shows! At least make it PG, fer cryin' out loud.
And the time would be much better spent making an interface that is efficient. I like to WORK WITH my computer, not look at pretty drop shadows and such. They can be added later, but there is much more that could be done to make a GOOD OOUI. They should NOT be chasing the horrid UI that is windoze. They should be refining and making it more efficient, more consistent. GUI's don't have to be inefficient compared to command line. It's just that everyone keeps #!@#$% copying that M$ pile of dung.
Why don't they focus on making GTK lightweight and consistent first? I mean, OS/2's WPS ran on 486's with 16MB of ram or less, and GTK apps and the like STILL don't have the intuitive object oriented design enjoyed way back in the early 90's.
Or just run ssh on the client and server and be done with it, but then again, it's far easier and more efficient to just use pine on the 'pop' server via ssh login when you are away. Or you could be uber-cool and run cyrus IMAP instead, then you are in sync and have all of your mail no matter where you are.
If marketing to these companies is a battle, then I believe these people are quite sick. You'd think they would not want to piss off potential customers. Isn't the whole point of marketing to get people to like your company and its products?
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No, I can't say I've had many of those problems on my linux boxes. Plenty of them in windoze though. What a pain in the ass to do even basic things in that horrid UI!
Hell, the 'hackers' are their best ally in this, being against all of this bullshit that happens and trying to do something about it. The general public has their fears targeted entirely wrong, and if they ever wake up the 'underground' will finally be able to make some good progress.
By definition, the type of stuff being shoved down users throats these days is about the only form of 'cyber-terrorism' in existence (theft of service, in your face ads for pornography, drugs, viruses to ensure they continue, illigitimate use of net messages on windoze boxes, etc). Why isn't the federal government doing something about it?
wvdial. There are also GUIs for this (most of them use wvdial as the back end ... wmppp, gppp-wvdial, gppp-wrap, etc). It just works (unless your idiot ISP or business uses a shiva with SPAP, then you are screwed no matter what you try to use if it is non-M$).
Any site that is going to use an 'internal' login (ie, not auth'd by the webserver, but by your backend database) must use cookies. My cycling team calendar I wrote does this, and I have always on the login page stated that cookies are needed for the site to work, and what the cookies are used for. What's the big deal?
We did something like x-plane does as a semester-long project. Of course, our programs only did control derivitaves, and not in real time. We used a 'lifting surface' model, modelling votex sheets, as illustrated in Dr. David Barnes's book (who also happened to be the class instructor, imagine that).
If you are NATing, then you are already using a firewall. You can firewall real addresses without having to NAT them, you know.
Blocking? How about just not running the shit in the first place?!? Oh yeah, I forgot. Microsoft. You're lucky to even know what you are running at any given time, let alone even be ABLE to turn off the 'unnecessary' service that 30 other pieces of windoze seems to require, only on localhost, mind you, but by golly lets open it to the world for kicks!
If software were properly engineered, it would have far less 'bugs'. You don't see any other discipline like this. An engineer doesn't build a bridge/airplane/car/elevator/building any which way and then say "let's see how it works!" Oops, fell apart...repeat. No, they understand materials science, they do preliminary designs/tests/models, they analyze their design, they make sure their calculations are correct, and THEN they build. Computer programmers today do it as a totally backwards clusterfuck. It doesn't help that the tools they use are not properly engineered either (libraries, etc).
anti-virus software is pretty much useless. Viruses are a *SOCIAL* problem, not a technical one. In fact, I'd say that anti-virus software itself can be just as damaging to using your machine as any virus..note anybody whose virus scanning is set to paranoid, going through its thousands of hashes on every single file read/write.
That's what it sounds like to me.
How about not installing it by default, but having it on a separate CD, which may or may not include mozilla/netscape alternatives? Or an icon on the desktop that says 'Install browser' which would then give the user a choice of browsers to install, and it would then get that choice from the 'net and install?
How about a simplistic modem you can plug into the phone outlet so you can have callerid overlaid on your TV for incoming calls? Or notifications of friends/etc logging onto IM or IRC servers, and the ability to 'page' you?
Following up on my own post, if all U.S. citizens thought like this guy, we really would be in trouble, as nobody in this country would even HAVE the skills necessary to do anything with high technology, instead encouraging companies to whore out our tech to other countries that are actually progressing with the technology we gave them as a foot in the door.
That's a pretty dumb reason to not pursue a programming/engineering degree. I studied Aerospace, mainly because I was interested in how airplanes and rockets and all of that other cool stuff work. Getting a job out of it would have been nice, but I tend to think my career path in IT has been more rewarding. I do not regret my education, despite not using it directly. It taught me stuff I wanted to know, that I could NEVER possibly hope to learn on my own.
In short, discouraging someone from pursuing a degree in something that interestes them, just because "You won't get a job doing that" is a pretty dismal outlook on the whole point of a higher education.
I'd agree with your post except for the fact that spammers forge their addresses, hijack open relays, bounce their reply-to addresses, etc (seems silly that if I really wanted their product, I have no way to get in touch with them...). If these guys used real addresses on their OWN servers, then they might be able to legitimately call it 'marketing' or 'advertising'
I don't think marketing via email would be quite as offensive if these guys were prosecuted for fraud, and if they had real ways to opt-out (of course, an opt-in only system is preferable).
Get the fsckers on fraud, and make it a federal offense and most of the problem goes away immediately.
Seems the perceived problem is 'dead' links. Isn't an archive of NEWS of all things a GOOD thing??? Sometimes you want to see the old/original version of whatever.
I do this all the time so that I can quake but also check gaim / IRC messages as they come in, without having to stop the game. Lessee, where's that link...ah here it is: http://freefall.homeip.net/stuff/quakescript/
Kind of like the time I was working on putting the second line in my ex-gf's house, and the phone rang. *bzzt* - dammit!
So I guess you don't like bumper-cars at amusement parks either? Why does the p.s. have to be onboard? Electric trains, trollies, maglev, whatever. There are practical uses.
Indeed. You cannot be free if you do not have any security.
Brainwashing at its best.
And the time would be much better spent making an interface that is efficient. I like to WORK WITH my computer, not look at pretty drop shadows and such. They can be added later, but there is much more that could be done to make a GOOD OOUI. They should NOT be chasing the horrid UI that is windoze. They should be refining and making it more efficient, more consistent. GUI's don't have to be inefficient compared to command line. It's just that everyone keeps #!@#$% copying that M$ pile of dung.
Why don't they focus on making GTK lightweight and consistent first? I mean, OS/2's WPS ran on 486's with 16MB of ram or less, and GTK apps and the like STILL don't have the intuitive object oriented design enjoyed way back in the early 90's.
ssh -N -l loginname -i ~/.ssh/identity_nopass -L 5110:localhost:110 pop.server.net
In the above, you would configure your pop client to go to localhost as the server on port 5110.
If marketing to these companies is a battle, then I believe these people are quite sick. You'd think they would not want to piss off potential customers. Isn't the whole point of marketing to get people to like your company and its products?