I can tell you: Christianity is used to being harrassed, and Christianity has shown itself to be nothing, if not resilient to this kind of thing. Whereas Islam is extremely poor at handling criticism; you might find yourself dead, burned, having some bizarre rushdie-like death sentence on you, or being chased by a bunch of brainwashed muslims.
This has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Western secularism. You can thank ATHEISTS like Thomas Paine for the freedom of religion we enjoy in the West.
Christians INVENTED the concept of "heresy", murdering people who believe very slightly differently than the way you do. The Catholic church became the dominate Christian sect by slaughtering everyone else. Christianity, much like Islam, has spread almost entirely through the sword. "Convert or die" has been the Christian mantra since at least the 4th century.
Everyone here is missing the context. YouTube has been banning anti-Muslim videos much more often than anti-Christian videos because the anti-Muslim videos have been MUCH more offensive and racist. Videos accusing Muslims of raping children, using children as suicide bombers, claims that all Muslims are suicide bombers, graphics of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews, truly offensive depictions of Mohammed (like graphics of Mohammed raping children), calling Arabs "towel heads" and "sand niggers", etc. Similar video simply has not been posted anywhere NEAR as often with Christianity and other religions, but when it is, it's banned too.
And this hasn't happened just once, it's happened thousands of times. YouTube has rules against posting offensive and racist videos. I haven't seen the video that was banned, but even assuming it was fairly tame one can easily see how YouTube might remove it in a knee-jerk manner.
I'm guessing that what we are seeing here is not protection of religion, but protection is Islam... As you can see, it's the sort of fight that political correctness (in all its self-righteous glory) demands.
Everyone here is missing the context. YouTube has been banning anti-Muslim videos much more often than anti-Christian videos because the anti-Muslim videos have been MUCH more offensive and racist. Videos accusing Muslims of raping children, using children as suicide bombers, claims that all Muslims are suicide bombers, graphics of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews, truly offensive depictions of Mohammad (like graphics of Mohammad raping children), calling Arabs "towel heads" and "sand niggers", etc. Similar video simply has not been posted anywhere NEAR as often with Christianity and other religions, but when it is, it's banned too.
And this hasn't happened just once, it's happened thousands of times. YouTube has rules against posting offensive and racist videos. I haven't seen the video that was banned, but even assuming it was fairly tame one can easily see how YouTube might remove it in a knee-jerk manner.
If the Koran has a meaning, it can be translated, and of the millions of English-speaking Muslims in the world there must be a few who are up to the job of translating it correctly.... The difficulty of translation always gets raised any time anyone mentions any of the terrible things the Koran actually says that Muslims and Muslim sympathizers would like it not to say. It gets tiresome, particularly as it always gets raised as if it were a new and interesting issue instead of an old and tired one. Muslims have been complaining about this for decades. Don't you think its about time that some Muslim leaders got together and produced an authorized edition?
Subtle gradations of meaning can be lost during translation. The fact they you don't know this simply shows that you haven't done a lot of translation, especially of ancient languages. Jews don't consider translations of the Koran as authoritative (or even "holy", in any sense) for exactly this reason. The same is true of many Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist texts. For example, any "serious" student of Taoism is expected to learn ancient Chinese.
Bible translations vary widely too, and there are a few cases where even good translations differ on substantive matters, but the gist of the sentiment is almost always clear
No it isn't. There are often radical differences in translations which can lead to serious doctrinal differences. Part of the split between Protestant and Catholic has to do with the interpretation of various passages. You're coming from the perspective of an unbeliever to whom such fine distinctions don't matter. They do to Christians.
And you also don't seem to recognize the awesome effort put into translating the Bible into English by Christians. Literally BILLIONS of USD has been spent, and literally centuries of effort. There certainly ARE English translations of the Koran, it's just that they aren't as precise as the Bible translations because nowhere near as much effort has been spent translating them and there is less incentive to do so as the Islamic academic culture strongly prefers study of the Koran in Arabic (see above). I find it unlikely that Islamic scholars are going to risk the integrity of the Koran by altering this culture.
Drum Hero is in the pipe and it will likely contain a co-op mode with at least 1 Guitar Hero controller, much like how the GuitarMania/BeatMania games linked together on the PS2 in Japan. So, in theory, you'll be able to do a 3-piece band with Drum Hero when it comes out.
Putting aside my opinion that the only programs that should be required to be run as admin are the administrative tools and such, forcing iTunes to only be allowed to run as admin is just pointless.
You misinterpreted what I meant. Right now, iTunes 7 requires administrator rights in Windows XP in order to run properly. Part of the new security features of Vista is discouraging users from running an account with admin rights. iTunes 7 does not apparently play nice with these features. However you can apparently work around these problems by "Run As..." the app with an admin account. Apple says on their support page that this will be fixed soonhttp://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum =305042. I still say they had lots of time to fix these problems before Vista's release.
It's not google's fault that you are so thick you can't implement folders within 5 minutes with a label and an archiving filter.
Because some of us actually like folders. And there are plenty of of mail clients (like Eudora, Outlook, Evolution, etc.) that support both folders and labels and filtering for both. Why should I give up this functionality that I use and like?
First off, it's "up to" 2 years. It's entirely possible for a magistrate to sentence the offender to far less time or none at all. Extenuating circumstances (he was just a stupid kid) arguments can be made at sentencing and are ususally very effective in the UK.
Second, compared to our American gulags most British prisons are practically country clubs. They're slowly getting worse in the UK, but they are still better.
There is no lock-in when you have a web services API that lets you snake out that data.
It it allows for local replication, that would be very useful. This would also solve the internet connectivity problem because you you lost connection to Google's servers you could always fall-back on the locally replicated copy. I don't know if Google currently offers or will offer this functionality.
Look into Computer Vision Syndrome. A number of studies have show that users experience more eyestrain reading off computer monitors vs. printed material. Reading in general causes myopia.
I like my waterproof, backlit PDA a whole lot for reading.
If connectivity is so important get a redundant line.
And fiber cuts never happen? Lightning strikes never happen? Redundant lines rarely protect against outages. And it cuts both ways. If something happens on Google's end you'll also lose access (or more likely) performance will be severely degraded.
I don't think they are, but in any case talk to the hundreds of thousands of workers across the world who work with 512 MB or less RAM and for whom web apps like this would be faster than installed software.
Really? What apps are these? I can't think of ANY web apps that outperform comparable desktop apps, on the same hardware. Note the word "comparable". Word and Excel are not comparable to Docs and Spreadsheets as the MS apps have vastly more features, but they're faster anyway.
Symlinks don't have permissions of their own, they inherit the permissions of whatever they link to.
Fair enough, but you didn't answer my question: How are hardlinks supposed to contribute to security? Technically, you might argue that maintaining links is a "security" task, but that's just splitting hairs. It's still work.
What apps? I've never run into an app that requires root when it shouldn't. Not even various commercial software makes that mistake.
The KAI tunneling daemon, the CCS daemon, PAR2, and one that I can remember all want root on my Debian box. Now I might be able to fiddle them into not needing root, but I'd have to futz with lots of permissions.
I currently have 9147 emails in my inbox, more if you count archived items and spam. No speed issues here.
Than you have much higher tolerance for poor performance than I do. I just checked my Gmail account and I have 1600 messages in my Inbox. It takes about 1.5 seconds to transmit each page and slightly longer (about 1.8 seconds) to pop up an email message. This means that it would take about 4 minutes just to scroll through the email headers. I find this intermitibly slow compared to Eudora, the desktop email client I use. BTW, I'm on a 10 megabit cable connection less than 5 miles from the Googleplex.
Security on Google apps is feeble and basic, you might as well publish all your internal information to the web
As far as I'm aware, the only security on Google apps is the password-protected login which is transmitted in the clear (Docs and Spreadsheets does not apparently use SSL or TLS), making it pretty easy to sniff. There have also been a number of exploits in GMail, which would affect D&S as they use the same login. I would also feel more comfortable if they supported some soft of VPN for corporate users.
Are you saying Microsoft DIDN'T break compatibility?
That's what I'm saying. It is not Microsoft's responsiblity to test every 3rd party Windows app before they release a new version of their operating system, even assuming that was possible. It's the vendor's responsibility, in this case, Apple's. Apple could easily have obtained one of the beta versions of Vista and tested iTunes against that in the many years before Vista's release. iTunes 7 was released after the betas were widely available, and many users reported that iTunes 7 didn't work with the Vista betas. So they certainly knew there were problems, they simply CHOSE not to do anything.
Of course, if they followed good Windows programming standards (ex. you have to run iTunes as an Administrator) they probably wouldn't be having these problems.
He explains why licensing DRM to other companies would not work due to the stringent contractual requirements that the music companies have placed on Apple in regards to maintaining the integrity of the DRM system.
This may or may not be true, but even if it is, it's pretty self-serving. It certiainly is POSSIBLE to have a label-approved DRM scheme that is widely licensed, Microsoft is doing it right now. It's possible that Apple's contract with the labels DOES forbid them from licensing the DRM technology to anyone else, I don't know. I suspect that contract is confidential but there might be some public filing somewhere. OF course, Apple could simply renegoiate the contract.
Are you aware that Apple is compressing all the Music from their digital masters which have a much wider frequency and dynamic range than a shitty Audio CD?
No, they're not. Virtually all of the music on iTunes was ripped from Audio CDs using mostly Plextor CD-ROM drives. I've seen them do it with my own eyes. And you're also assuming, quite wrongly, that Audio CD's have na inferior frequecy and dynamic range response to DAT. In 2 channel mode DAT tape which has similar audio properties ro Audio CDs. There is also the fact that DAT tape rapidly degrades over time, about as fast as cassette tape, making it unsuitable for archival purposes. Record labels, at least in my experience, archive vinyl LPs and compact discs, and very recently, hard disks masters.
AAC at 128 Kbps provides significantly superior performance than does MP3 at 128 Kbps
This is only true if you stack the deck in AAC's favor. Yes, AAC is superior to Fraunhofer's original implementation of the MP3 codec. However, most people use the LAME implementation which has vastly better psychoacustics. It is now generally agreed that LAME MP3 sounds as good as AAC. AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis all introduce slightly different artifacts and different sets of "golden ears" regards some of these as more "displeasing" than others. YMMV. What really makes AAC superior to other codecs are it's advanced feaures (multitrack mixing, etc.). Features that Apple's implemtation does not use. If you care about quality, use FLAC. Rockbox and the Rio Karma support playback in this format (I have a Karma).
For multiple users changing permissions or multiple owners, read man setfacl
I just did, it contains this line:
o Exactly one user entry specified for the file
owner.
You have have the owner be a group, which would allow multiple users to technically be the owner, but this is not the same thing as having multiple owner permissions on the file.
Hardlinks by the way, make the standard unix permissions system much more useful,
You're right, I don't understand this. Hardlinks are an aid to data organization (and more importantly, data redundancy, which is much less of a problem than it used to be), not security. The only advantage hardlinks have over symlinks that that certain utilties treat symlinks different from filesa nd you might not want that behavior. Sure you can use lots of hardlinks and symlinks to minimize the amount of directories you have to permission, but then you have to maintain all the symlinks and hardlinks and make sure THEY have the proper permissions. I don't understand how this reduces work or really adds much capability.
And while I'm at it, I'd point out that ACLs are a mess on Linux because only a fraction of the software supports ACLs. For example, Konqueror strips ACL information off files it moves. I can think of 4 apps on my little Linux box that REQUIRE that they be run as root, etc. You might complain that I shouldn't use that software, but I've found the the MAJORITY of software for Linux either doesn't properly support ACLs and/or needs to run as root. In fact, the assumption that root will be running almost everything seems to be built into Linux and most of the Linux distributions I've used.
I think virtually any office environment would be insane fools to replace Microsoft Office with Google's apps. I'm really stunned that nobody on/. has pointed out the glaringly obvious problems:
1. The Internet
If for any reason the company loses it's internet access (this NEVER happens) that company has NO access to any of their internal data yet they still have to pay for that non-existant access. One fiber cut or lightning strike can knock out internet access for days for many companies. If they were running Google apps they'd basically have to completely close up shop for that period.
2. Performance
These are web apps, so they're inherently slow. Google Docs and spreadsheets slows to a crawl with very large documents. Gmail in an account with thousands of emails is painful.
3. Data integrity
Google encourages users in the software to store all their documents on Google's servers, not locally. Is google willing to guarentee those documents availability? Are they doing regular backups? I happen to know that they don't. My gmail account has spontaneously lost mail, for example.
4. Security
Security on Google apps is feeble and basic, you might as well publish all your internal information to the web.
5. Features
Google apps only have a tiny fraction of the features of MS Office, or even OpenOffice. Unless you're only doing very basic tasks, Google's apps lack features you are currently using.
I want to expand on this last point. The feature-set of the google apps is INCREDIBLY sparse compared to MS Office. Gmail is nice for webmail, but it's SLOW and has only a crude filtering mechanism (no folders = retarded) nowhere NEAR as sophisticated as Outlook, or any of a dozen proper email applications. Many of Google's own employees complained quite loudly when the company switched from Exchange to Gmail due to the lack of features, particularly in regards to Google Calendaring, which sucks. Their spreadsheet app apparently has no graph or reporting capabilites. None.
The whole ASP concept is basically snake oil. Vendor lock-in at it's absolute worst.
Truly, what do you do now that requires several orders of magnitude more computational power than you did 10 years ago? If you're like most people, running email, word processing, low compexity spreadsheets, simple graphics programs for presentations and the like, I'd assert "not much."Sure we have more glitz, but does anyone think that MS Word now is that much more functional than MS Word 5 was on Windows 95???
You've never heard of document collaboration I take it? Where have you been for the last 10 years?
CIOs gain authority by fielding systems that have some sense of 'business case' but that require expensive tech support staff.
And unix/linux doesn't? I take it you've never configured LDAP.
In order to install the current version of Exchange you pretty much have to become a directory services expert. You need to know Active Directory pretty well
You talk about that like it's a bad thing. Active Directory is the best thing to happen to user management since NDS. And I really think it compares well to other full-featured groupware systems (like Domino and Groupwise), especially in terms of ease-of-use. If all you want is a POP3 email server, yeah, recent versions of Exchange are way over the top.
And not to be petty, but Citadel really isn't a replacement for Exchange. It has only basic calendaring, no apparent built-in mobile device support for IM or calendaring, and doesn't talk to 3rd-party IM, which pretty much locks out mobile support unless you've built a Pocket PC and/or Palm client. I suspect the web-interface is far to slow and complicated for a mobile device. You don't support S/MIME, or any sort of encrypted email it seems.
You're also using IMAP, which is basically broken. If it's Web 2.0 why aren't you using SOAP? In fact, I just looked for "IMAP sucks" on Google and this is one of the very first links I found:
"Art Cancro said: It's not the software's fault. IMAP is a horribly designed protocol. I wrote the IMAP implementation for the Citadel groupware server (do take Citadel for a spin if you haven't seen it yet, it's great) and I can tell you without a doubt, it's because the protocol semantics are so convoluted that the software implementing it ends up being so quirky.
It's not a simple protocol, which is a shame because it could be. You need fairly sophisticated language parsers at both ends of the link, you need to translate data formats, you need to understand how to handle the same data in several different formats... it's a BIG mess.
Simple protocols tend to be implemented reliably because they're straightforward. That's why POP3 is so easily implemented. IMAP is way too complex. The only reason it's a standard is because Marc Crispin was in the right place at the right time." http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004841.htm l
Don't get me wrong, Cittadel definitely looks attractive if you want something cheap/free and seems almost ideal for it's target market (bulletin boards), but corporate users are a lot more demanding.
The killer was released several years ago, under the name "Mac OS X". Avalon/WPF doesn't really do a whole lot that Quartz hasn't been doing for many years now. It has "caught up" more or less, but that doesn't make up for years of suffering with GDI.
As opposed to what? At lest GDI was consistent, unlike user interface elements of MacOS X which seem to change randomly. That's the biggest downside from MacOS 9 to X, the UI quirks that were introduced.
There is also the fact that reading off a monitor is harder on your eyes because of the very slight "wiggle" of text characters. There is also contrast, "warmth", etc. And yeah, it's a fact. Reading off a computer monitor will cause eyestraing and exacerbate nearsightdness MUCH faster than print. These problems haven't been changed by the transition to LCDs. PDAs and E-Book readers are even worse because of their shitty screens.
Guess what happened to them? Two different things - automatic account termination and/or warnings. I've seen a huge seller (makes $$ for eBay you know) have their account closed, no questions asked.
Even if this were true in most or even all cases, it wouldn't matter since the penalty for termination is nonexistent. You just set up another account, 3 minutes tops. And yes, you can set up an account with the exact same features with the EXACT same identifying information (not that changing that represents much of a burden either) minutes after an account has been terminated.
The solutions are pretty straightforward: Collecting detailed identity information from sellers (birth certificate, etc.), bonding or hefty deposits, closer cooperation with law enforcement, etc. Fraud is rampant on ebay because it's EASY, make it harder to commit fraud by increasing the barrier to entry for sellers. Of course, all this REAL security (as opposed to the bullshit ebay passes off as security) both reduces the pool of potential sellers AND cost them more money. So it's not like they're going to do this willingly. Expect a class-action and/or government action at some point.
The fixing auctions, with shill bidders on the other hand, isn't as bad in my book. Just don't pay more than you want to pay for it. This is the sellers way of saying they don't want to sell it for less. Getting "caught up" in an auction for a common item is just dumb.
But what if it isn't a "common item"? Buying off-the-shelf crap that you can get at Wal-Mart on ebay is fucking retarded, and that should be obvious to everyone. ebay is items that are vintage, used, unique, or difficult-to-find. For example, when trying to buy a new Rio Karma MP3 player (now long out of production and difficult to find) it took me weeks to get one at a reasonable price because of shill bidding and the first one was defective and the seller managed to weasel out of returning my money by using third-party processers and other tricks.
Don't get me wrong, I buy and sell stuff on ebay. But certainly liked many of the other auction sites BETTER when they were around (Amazon auctions, Yahoo! Auctions) and I've leared that basically ALL of the "professional" sellers are complete scam artists.
This is not good auction design, but it is easily fixed: enforce single-bids or reset the clock. If you do the former, you force the humans to be truthful--and completely eliminate any incentive to shill--and if you do the later, you remove the incentive to engage in the robotic 100 millisecond dash.
PLEASE mod the parent up. This poster has exactly and succinctly described what is wrong with the the ebay system and why ebay isn't changing it. Other online auction systems used one of the above methods to prevent praud and abuse (like Yahoo! Auctions) they fell by the wayside because ebay (throuhg advertising or whatever) attracted a lot more buyers. And I would argue that the shady bidding practices on ebay also encouraged the "Powersellers" (who mostly seem to be scammers) to stay there.
You don't get his point that this represents a terrible inconvienience for end users. Windows 98 Upgrades required the presence of Windows 95 to do an upgrade and it was a PITA, espeually if you were trying to "upgrade" a trashed system. Windows 2000 and XP Upgrades required only the old media, which you had to insert during the install process. This was much more convienent and the new rule represent a huge step backward for functionality.
Quite simply, we have no good solution in helping parents decide what their children should witness and no system should be implemented until we do.
I was goign to mod, but I just HAD to comment on this one.
There is a good system for doing this already: It's called "locking your kids up". The idea that parents SHOULD somehow control everything their kids see and hear is rather ridiculous, and shows a basic lack of understanding about how media works. Kids gravitate NATURALLY to media targetted towards them (kids TV shows, internet sites, etc.) because, shockingly, it's targeted towards them. Kids in the past preferred fairy tales to bawdy plays too. The notion that the internet has radically changed anything in terms of what kids are exposed to is basically false. Even more false is the notion that exposure to such media causes anything but embarassing questions for parents.
For those parents to wish to save themselves that embarassment and like torturing their kids, there are plenty of options. For TV there is Sky Angel and other specialty sattelite systems which presumably has little or no "objectionable" content and specialty ISPs for the same purpose. If if that's not enough for you, you can lock 'em up and homeschool 'em. You CAN be a Luddite if you really want to, the Amish manage it.
How the fuck is being blinded more cruel than being shot?
It depends on how you define "cruel". Many would argue that (for a purely hypothetical example) a magic ray that would cause people to go permanently insane would be worse than bullets (myself included). However, it's much simpler to say that laser weapons used for blinding are much more likely to painfully injure rather than truly disable a target, so to take out most targets with the laser you are effectively going to have to "shoot" them several times rather than just once thereby extending the targets suffering. Also, the disabled sniper is likely to become a prisoner of war due to his inablity to flee and, due to his impariment, is likely to suffer far worse than the average prisoner of war. Such weapons are also tied to the unethical "total war" strategy of draining your opponent's resources because caring for a crippled soldier is more "resource intensive" than burying one.
It is also certain that any such weapon is going to be used for torture and/or "prisoner control". And in fact, this is the main reason why prohibition of such weapons is in place. So-called "less than lethal" weapons (like tasers) are contraversial under the Geneva conventions because they are widely used for torture.
It's still lighter, less complicated, and less expensive than a soldier.
It is too heavy for a soldier to carry and with the batteries probably has a range of a couple miles and a top speed of 5mph tops. That means you need a vehicle to transport the thing. It also probably can't handle stairs, has a limited field of view, can't handle tight corners very well, etc. If you've ever had to handle a treaded robot in real life (I have) you would know how silly the notion of a device like this seeing wide deployment really is. UAVS are different. They only have to deal with the sky, not terrain. And there are lots of problems navigating them. Anti-bomb robots are different. Because they are so difficult to manuever they are moved VERY slowly, something that would dramatically limited the usefulness of this system. It simply cannot manuever quickly enough to keep up with infantry, they would have to creep along behind it.
I think it's very likely that the military will order them to, as they will want to justify the money they spent on it.
Which will last until about the 10th time a sniper runs off and resets while the squad is busy fussing with this stupid robot.
Yeah, except for disabling it so it can't be used to pinpoint any snipers. That would be, like, totally pointless. I can't imagine why a sniper wouldn't want someone to know where they were.
My post posited that it was likely the robot couldn't detect snipers accurately unless the snipers were shooting directly at the robot.
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I can tell you: Christianity is used to being harrassed, and Christianity has shown itself to be nothing, if not resilient to this kind of thing. Whereas Islam is extremely poor at handling criticism; you might find yourself dead, burned, having some bizarre rushdie-like death sentence on you, or being chased by a bunch of brainwashed muslims.
This has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Western secularism. You can thank ATHEISTS like Thomas Paine for the freedom of religion we enjoy in the West.
Christians INVENTED the concept of "heresy", murdering people who believe very slightly differently than the way you do. The Catholic church became the dominate Christian sect by slaughtering everyone else. Christianity, much like Islam, has spread almost entirely through the sword. "Convert or die" has been the Christian mantra since at least the 4th century.
Everyone here is missing the context. YouTube has been banning anti-Muslim videos much more often than anti-Christian videos because the anti-Muslim videos have been MUCH more offensive and racist. Videos accusing Muslims of raping children, using children as suicide bombers, claims that all Muslims are suicide bombers, graphics of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews, truly offensive depictions of Mohammed (like graphics of Mohammed raping children), calling Arabs "towel heads" and "sand niggers", etc. Similar video simply has not been posted anywhere NEAR as often with Christianity and other religions, but when it is, it's banned too.
And this hasn't happened just once, it's happened thousands of times. YouTube has rules against posting offensive and racist videos. I haven't seen the video that was banned, but even assuming it was fairly tame one can easily see how YouTube might remove it in a knee-jerk manner.
I'm guessing that what we are seeing here is not protection of religion, but protection is Islam ... As you can see, it's the sort of fight that political correctness (in all its self-righteous glory) demands.
Everyone here is missing the context. YouTube has been banning anti-Muslim videos much more often than anti-Christian videos because the anti-Muslim videos have been MUCH more offensive and racist. Videos accusing Muslims of raping children, using children as suicide bombers, claims that all Muslims are suicide bombers, graphics of Muslims murdering Christians and Jews, truly offensive depictions of Mohammad (like graphics of Mohammad raping children), calling Arabs "towel heads" and "sand niggers", etc. Similar video simply has not been posted anywhere NEAR as often with Christianity and other religions, but when it is, it's banned too.
And this hasn't happened just once, it's happened thousands of times. YouTube has rules against posting offensive and racist videos. I haven't seen the video that was banned, but even assuming it was fairly tame one can easily see how YouTube might remove it in a knee-jerk manner.
If the Koran has a meaning, it can be translated, and of the millions of English-speaking Muslims in the world there must be a few who are up to the job of translating it correctly. ... The difficulty of translation always gets raised any time anyone mentions any of the terrible things the Koran actually says that Muslims and Muslim sympathizers would like it not to say. It gets tiresome, particularly as it always gets raised as if it were a new and interesting issue instead of an old and tired one. Muslims have been complaining about this for decades. Don't you think its about time that some Muslim leaders got together and produced an authorized edition?
Subtle gradations of meaning can be lost during translation. The fact they you don't know this simply shows that you haven't done a lot of translation, especially of ancient languages. Jews don't consider translations of the Koran as authoritative (or even "holy", in any sense) for exactly this reason. The same is true of many Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist texts. For example, any "serious" student of Taoism is expected to learn ancient Chinese.
Bible translations vary widely too, and there are a few cases where even good translations differ on substantive matters, but the gist of the sentiment is almost always clear
No it isn't. There are often radical differences in translations which can lead to serious doctrinal differences. Part of the split between Protestant and Catholic has to do with the interpretation of various passages. You're coming from the perspective of an unbeliever to whom such fine distinctions don't matter. They do to Christians.
And you also don't seem to recognize the awesome effort put into translating the Bible into English by Christians. Literally BILLIONS of USD has been spent, and literally centuries of effort. There certainly ARE English translations of the Koran, it's just that they aren't as precise as the Bible translations because nowhere near as much effort has been spent translating them and there is less incentive to do so as the Islamic academic culture strongly prefers study of the Koran in Arabic (see above). I find it unlikely that Islamic scholars are going to risk the integrity of the Koran by altering this culture.
Drum Hero is in the pipe and it will likely contain a co-op mode with at least 1 Guitar Hero controller, much like how the GuitarMania/BeatMania games linked together on the PS2 in Japan. So, in theory, you'll be able to do a 3-piece band with Drum Hero when it comes out.
Putting aside my opinion that the only programs that should be required to be run as admin are the administrative tools and such, forcing iTunes to only be allowed to run as admin is just pointless.
m =305042. I still say they had lots of time to fix these problems before Vista's release.
You misinterpreted what I meant. Right now, iTunes 7 requires administrator rights in Windows XP in order to run properly. Part of the new security features of Vista is discouraging users from running an account with admin rights. iTunes 7 does not apparently play nice with these features. However you can apparently work around these problems by "Run As..." the app with an admin account. Apple says on their support page that this will be fixed soonhttp://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnu
It's not google's fault that you are so thick you can't implement folders within 5 minutes with a label and an archiving filter.
Because some of us actually like folders. And there are plenty of of mail clients (like Eudora, Outlook, Evolution, etc.) that support both folders and labels and filtering for both. Why should I give up this functionality that I use and like?
First off, it's "up to" 2 years. It's entirely possible for a magistrate to sentence the offender to far less time or none at all. Extenuating circumstances (he was just a stupid kid) arguments can be made at sentencing and are ususally very effective in the UK.
Second, compared to our American gulags most British prisons are practically country clubs. They're slowly getting worse in the UK, but they are still better.
There is no lock-in when you have a web services API that lets you snake out that data.
It it allows for local replication, that would be very useful. This would also solve the internet connectivity problem because you you lost connection to Google's servers you could always fall-back on the locally replicated copy. I don't know if Google currently offers or will offer this functionality.
Citation please?
Look into Computer Vision Syndrome. A number of studies have show that users experience more eyestrain reading off computer monitors vs. printed material. Reading in general causes myopia.
I like my waterproof, backlit PDA a whole lot for reading.
You have a waterPROOF PDA? Where do I get one?
If connectivity is so important get a redundant line.
And fiber cuts never happen? Lightning strikes never happen? Redundant lines rarely protect against outages. And it cuts both ways. If something happens on Google's end you'll also lose access (or more likely) performance will be severely degraded.
I don't think they are, but in any case talk to the hundreds of thousands of workers across the world who work with 512 MB or less RAM and for whom web apps like this would be faster than installed software.
Really? What apps are these? I can't think of ANY web apps that outperform comparable desktop apps, on the same hardware. Note the word "comparable". Word and Excel are not comparable to Docs and Spreadsheets as the MS apps have vastly more features, but they're faster anyway.
Symlinks don't have permissions of their own, they inherit the permissions of whatever they link to.
Fair enough, but you didn't answer my question: How are hardlinks supposed to contribute to security? Technically, you might argue that maintaining links is a "security" task, but that's just splitting hairs. It's still work.
What apps? I've never run into an app that requires root when it shouldn't. Not even various commercial software makes that mistake.
The KAI tunneling daemon, the CCS daemon, PAR2, and one that I can remember all want root on my Debian box. Now I might be able to fiddle them into not needing root, but I'd have to futz with lots of permissions.
I currently have 9147 emails in my inbox, more if you count archived items and spam. No speed issues here.
Than you have much higher tolerance for poor performance than I do. I just checked my Gmail account and I have 1600 messages in my Inbox. It takes about 1.5 seconds to transmit each page and slightly longer (about 1.8 seconds) to pop up an email message. This means that it would take about 4 minutes just to scroll through the email headers. I find this intermitibly slow compared to Eudora, the desktop email client I use. BTW, I'm on a 10 megabit cable connection less than 5 miles from the Googleplex.
Security on Google apps is feeble and basic, you might as well publish all your internal information to the web
As far as I'm aware, the only security on Google apps is the password-protected login which is transmitted in the clear (Docs and Spreadsheets does not apparently use SSL or TLS), making it pretty easy to sniff. There have also been a number of exploits in GMail, which would affect D&S as they use the same login. I would also feel more comfortable if they supported some soft of VPN for corporate users.
Are you saying Microsoft DIDN'T break compatibility?
That's what I'm saying. It is not Microsoft's responsiblity to test every 3rd party Windows app before they release a new version of their operating system, even assuming that was possible. It's the vendor's responsibility, in this case, Apple's. Apple could easily have obtained one of the beta versions of Vista and tested iTunes against that in the many years before Vista's release. iTunes 7 was released after the betas were widely available, and many users reported that iTunes 7 didn't work with the Vista betas. So they certainly knew there were problems, they simply CHOSE not to do anything.
Of course, if they followed good Windows programming standards (ex. you have to run iTunes as an Administrator) they probably wouldn't be having these problems.
He explains why licensing DRM to other companies would not work due to the stringent contractual requirements that the music companies have placed on Apple in regards to maintaining the integrity of the DRM system.
This may or may not be true, but even if it is, it's pretty self-serving. It certiainly is POSSIBLE to have a label-approved DRM scheme that is widely licensed, Microsoft is doing it right now. It's possible that Apple's contract with the labels DOES forbid them from licensing the DRM technology to anyone else, I don't know. I suspect that contract is confidential but there might be some public filing somewhere. OF course, Apple could simply renegoiate the contract.
Are you aware that Apple is compressing all the Music from their digital masters which have a much wider frequency and dynamic range than a shitty Audio CD?
No, they're not. Virtually all of the music on iTunes was ripped from Audio CDs using mostly Plextor CD-ROM drives. I've seen them do it with my own eyes. And you're also assuming, quite wrongly, that Audio CD's have na inferior frequecy and dynamic range response to DAT. In 2 channel mode DAT tape which has similar audio properties ro Audio CDs. There is also the fact that DAT tape rapidly degrades over time, about as fast as cassette tape, making it unsuitable for archival purposes. Record labels, at least in my experience, archive vinyl LPs and compact discs, and very recently, hard disks masters.
AAC at 128 Kbps provides significantly superior performance than does MP3 at 128 Kbps
This is only true if you stack the deck in AAC's favor. Yes, AAC is superior to Fraunhofer's original implementation of the MP3 codec. However, most people use the LAME implementation which has vastly better psychoacustics. It is now generally agreed that LAME MP3 sounds as good as AAC. AAC, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis all introduce slightly different artifacts and different sets of "golden ears" regards some of these as more "displeasing" than others. YMMV. What really makes AAC superior to other codecs are it's advanced feaures (multitrack mixing, etc.). Features that Apple's implemtation does not use. If you care about quality, use FLAC. Rockbox and the Rio Karma support playback in this format (I have a Karma).
For multiple users changing permissions or multiple owners, read man setfacl
I just did, it contains this line:
o Exactly one user entry specified for the file
owner.
You have have the owner be a group, which would allow multiple users to technically be the owner, but this is not the same thing as having multiple owner permissions on the file.
Hardlinks by the way, make the standard unix permissions system much more useful,
You're right, I don't understand this. Hardlinks are an aid to data organization (and more importantly, data redundancy, which is much less of a problem than it used to be), not security. The only advantage hardlinks have over symlinks that that certain utilties treat symlinks different from filesa nd you might not want that behavior. Sure you can use lots of hardlinks and symlinks to minimize the amount of directories you have to permission, but then you have to maintain all the symlinks and hardlinks and make sure THEY have the proper permissions. I don't understand how this reduces work or really adds much capability.
And while I'm at it, I'd point out that ACLs are a mess on Linux because only a fraction of the software supports ACLs. For example, Konqueror strips ACL information off files it moves. I can think of 4 apps on my little Linux box that REQUIRE that they be run as root, etc. You might complain that I shouldn't use that software, but I've found the the MAJORITY of software for Linux either doesn't properly support ACLs and/or needs to run as root. In fact, the assumption that root will be running almost everything seems to be built into Linux and most of the Linux distributions I've used.
I think virtually any office environment would be insane fools to replace Microsoft Office with Google's apps. I'm really stunned that nobody on /. has pointed out the glaringly obvious problems:
1. The Internet
If for any reason the company loses it's internet access (this NEVER happens) that company has NO access to any of their internal data yet they still have to pay for that non-existant access. One fiber cut or lightning strike can knock out internet access for days for many companies. If they were running Google apps they'd basically have to completely close up shop for that period.
2. Performance
These are web apps, so they're inherently slow. Google Docs and spreadsheets slows to a crawl with very large documents. Gmail in an account with thousands of emails is painful.
3. Data integrity
Google encourages users in the software to store all their documents on Google's servers, not locally. Is google willing to guarentee those documents availability? Are they doing regular backups? I happen to know that they don't. My gmail account has spontaneously lost mail, for example.
4. Security
Security on Google apps is feeble and basic, you might as well publish all your internal information to the web.
5. Features
Google apps only have a tiny fraction of the features of MS Office, or even OpenOffice. Unless you're only doing very basic tasks, Google's apps lack features you are currently using.
I want to expand on this last point. The feature-set of the google apps is INCREDIBLY sparse compared to MS Office. Gmail is nice for webmail, but it's SLOW and has only a crude filtering mechanism (no folders = retarded) nowhere NEAR as sophisticated as Outlook, or any of a dozen proper email applications. Many of Google's own employees complained quite loudly when the company switched from Exchange to Gmail due to the lack of features, particularly in regards to Google Calendaring, which sucks. Their spreadsheet app apparently has no graph or reporting capabilites. None.
The whole ASP concept is basically snake oil. Vendor lock-in at it's absolute worst.
Truly, what do you do now that requires several orders of magnitude more computational power than you did 10 years ago? If you're like most people, running email, word processing, low compexity spreadsheets, simple graphics programs for presentations and the like, I'd assert "not much."Sure we have more glitz, but does anyone think that MS Word now is that much more functional than MS Word 5 was on Windows 95???
You've never heard of document collaboration I take it? Where have you been for the last 10 years?
CIOs gain authority by fielding systems that have some sense of 'business case' but that require expensive tech support staff.
And unix/linux doesn't? I take it you've never configured LDAP.
In order to install the current version of Exchange you pretty much have to become a directory services expert. You need to know Active Directory pretty well
... it's a BIG mess.
m l
You talk about that like it's a bad thing. Active Directory is the best thing to happen to user management since NDS. And I really think it compares well to other full-featured groupware systems (like Domino and Groupwise), especially in terms of ease-of-use. If all you want is a POP3 email server, yeah, recent versions of Exchange are way over the top.
And not to be petty, but Citadel really isn't a replacement for Exchange. It has only basic calendaring, no apparent built-in mobile device support for IM or calendaring, and doesn't talk to 3rd-party IM, which pretty much locks out mobile support unless you've built a Pocket PC and/or Palm client. I suspect the web-interface is far to slow and complicated for a mobile device. You don't support S/MIME, or any sort of encrypted email it seems.
You're also using IMAP, which is basically broken. If it's Web 2.0 why aren't you using SOAP? In fact, I just looked for "IMAP sucks" on Google and this is one of the very first links I found:
"Art Cancro said:
It's not the software's fault. IMAP is a horribly designed protocol. I wrote the IMAP implementation for the Citadel groupware server (do take Citadel for a spin if you haven't seen it yet, it's great) and I can tell you without a doubt, it's because the protocol semantics are so convoluted that the software implementing it ends up being so quirky.
It's not a simple protocol, which is a shame because it could be. You need fairly sophisticated language parsers at both ends of the link, you need to translate data formats, you need to understand how to handle the same data in several different formats
Simple protocols tend to be implemented reliably because they're straightforward. That's why POP3 is so easily implemented. IMAP is way too complex. The only reason it's a standard is because Marc Crispin was in the right place at the right time."
http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/004841.ht
Don't get me wrong, Cittadel definitely looks attractive if you want something cheap/free and seems almost ideal for it's target market (bulletin boards), but corporate users are a lot more demanding.
The killer was released several years ago, under the name "Mac OS X". Avalon/WPF doesn't really do a whole lot that Quartz hasn't been doing for many years now. It has "caught up" more or less, but that doesn't make up for years of suffering with GDI.
As opposed to what? At lest GDI was consistent, unlike user interface elements of MacOS X which seem to change randomly. That's the biggest downside from MacOS 9 to X, the UI quirks that were introduced.
There is also the fact that reading off a monitor is harder on your eyes because of the very slight "wiggle" of text characters. There is also contrast, "warmth", etc. And yeah, it's a fact. Reading off a computer monitor will cause eyestraing and exacerbate nearsightdness MUCH faster than print. These problems haven't been changed by the transition to LCDs. PDAs and E-Book readers are even worse because of their shitty screens.
Guess what happened to them? Two different things - automatic account termination and/or warnings. I've seen a huge seller (makes $$ for eBay you know) have their account closed, no questions asked.
Even if this were true in most or even all cases, it wouldn't matter since the penalty for termination is nonexistent. You just set up another account, 3 minutes tops. And yes, you can set up an account with the exact same features with the EXACT same identifying information (not that changing that represents much of a burden either) minutes after an account has been terminated.
The solutions are pretty straightforward: Collecting detailed identity information from sellers (birth certificate, etc.), bonding or hefty deposits, closer cooperation with law enforcement, etc. Fraud is rampant on ebay because it's EASY, make it harder to commit fraud by increasing the barrier to entry for sellers. Of course, all this REAL security (as opposed to the bullshit ebay passes off as security) both reduces the pool of potential sellers AND cost them more money. So it's not like they're going to do this willingly. Expect a class-action and/or government action at some point.
The fixing auctions, with shill bidders on the other hand, isn't as bad in my book. Just don't pay more than you want to pay for it. This is the sellers way of saying they don't want to sell it for less. Getting "caught up" in an auction for a common item is just dumb.
But what if it isn't a "common item"? Buying off-the-shelf crap that you can get at Wal-Mart on ebay is fucking retarded, and that should be obvious to everyone. ebay is items that are vintage, used, unique, or difficult-to-find. For example, when trying to buy a new Rio Karma MP3 player (now long out of production and difficult to find) it took me weeks to get one at a reasonable price because of shill bidding and the first one was defective and the seller managed to weasel out of returning my money by using third-party processers and other tricks.
Don't get me wrong, I buy and sell stuff on ebay. But certainly liked many of the other auction sites BETTER when they were around (Amazon auctions, Yahoo! Auctions) and I've leared that basically ALL of the "professional" sellers are complete scam artists.
This is not good auction design, but it is easily fixed: enforce single-bids or reset the clock. If you do the former, you force the humans to be truthful--and completely eliminate any incentive to shill--and if you do the later, you remove the incentive to engage in the robotic 100 millisecond dash.
PLEASE mod the parent up. This poster has exactly and succinctly described what is wrong with the the ebay system and why ebay isn't changing it. Other online auction systems used one of the above methods to prevent praud and abuse (like Yahoo! Auctions) they fell by the wayside because ebay (throuhg advertising or whatever) attracted a lot more buyers. And I would argue that the shady bidding practices on ebay also encouraged the "Powersellers" (who mostly seem to be scammers) to stay there.
You don't get his point that this represents a terrible inconvienience for end users. Windows 98 Upgrades required the presence of Windows 95 to do an upgrade and it was a PITA, espeually if you were trying to "upgrade" a trashed system. Windows 2000 and XP Upgrades required only the old media, which you had to insert during the install process. This was much more convienent and the new rule represent a huge step backward for functionality.
Quite simply, we have no good solution in helping parents decide what their children should witness and no system should be implemented until we do.
I was goign to mod, but I just HAD to comment on this one.
There is a good system for doing this already: It's called "locking your kids up". The idea that parents SHOULD somehow control everything their kids see and hear is rather ridiculous, and shows a basic lack of understanding about how media works. Kids gravitate NATURALLY to media targetted towards them (kids TV shows, internet sites, etc.) because, shockingly, it's targeted towards them. Kids in the past preferred fairy tales to bawdy plays too. The notion that the internet has radically changed anything in terms of what kids are exposed to is basically false. Even more false is the notion that exposure to such media causes anything but embarassing questions for parents.
For those parents to wish to save themselves that embarassment and like torturing their kids, there are plenty of options. For TV there is Sky Angel and other specialty sattelite systems which presumably has little or no "objectionable" content and specialty ISPs for the same purpose. If if that's not enough for you, you can lock 'em up and homeschool 'em. You CAN be a Luddite if you really want to, the Amish manage it.
How the fuck is being blinded more cruel than being shot?
It depends on how you define "cruel". Many would argue that (for a purely hypothetical example) a magic ray that would cause people to go permanently insane would be worse than bullets (myself included). However, it's much simpler to say that laser weapons used for blinding are much more likely to painfully injure rather than truly disable a target, so to take out most targets with the laser you are effectively going to have to "shoot" them several times rather than just once thereby extending the targets suffering. Also, the disabled sniper is likely to become a prisoner of war due to his inablity to flee and, due to his impariment, is likely to suffer far worse than the average prisoner of war. Such weapons are also tied to the unethical "total war" strategy of draining your opponent's resources because caring for a crippled soldier is more "resource intensive" than burying one.
It is also certain that any such weapon is going to be used for torture and/or "prisoner control". And in fact, this is the main reason why prohibition of such weapons is in place. So-called "less than lethal" weapons (like tasers) are contraversial under the Geneva conventions because they are widely used for torture.
It's still lighter, less complicated, and less expensive than a soldier.
It is too heavy for a soldier to carry and with the batteries probably has a range of a couple miles and a top speed of 5mph tops. That means you need a vehicle to transport the thing. It also probably can't handle stairs, has a limited field of view, can't handle tight corners very well, etc. If you've ever had to handle a treaded robot in real life (I have) you would know how silly the notion of a device like this seeing wide deployment really is. UAVS are different. They only have to deal with the sky, not terrain. And there are lots of problems navigating them. Anti-bomb robots are different. Because they are so difficult to manuever they are moved VERY slowly, something that would dramatically limited the usefulness of this system. It simply cannot manuever quickly enough to keep up with infantry, they would have to creep along behind it.
I think it's very likely that the military will order them to, as they will want to justify the money they spent on it.
Which will last until about the 10th time a sniper runs off and resets while the squad is busy fussing with this stupid robot.
Yeah, except for disabling it so it can't be used to pinpoint any snipers. That would be, like, totally pointless. I can't imagine why a sniper wouldn't want someone to know where they were.
My post posited that it was likely the robot couldn't detect snipers accurately unless the snipers were shooting directly at the robot.