If we see that Windows 7 is stable and worth the money we might begin to see a larger transition to it 6 months from now.
Umm... This is quite likely one of the reasons why Microsoft is allowing the Windows 7 RC to be used absolutely free for so long.
If you're at all interested in the stability and viability of Windows 7, you're either going to try it out yourself or check out the reviews of those who have.
They're giving you plenty of time to come to a conclusion before the release date.
Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?
They actually got this right according to Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait: "Their speed was a little less than a kilometer per second, which sounds about right. At their altitude there wouldn't be much if any air to slow them, so they'd free fall; as they plunged deeper air resistance would slow them down. At first I thought they'd actually burn like meteors, but in reality (ha! Reality!) they weren't going that fast." (link)
For comparison, Shuttle re-entry speed is a little less than 8km/s.
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons [...]
Then why does it insist on informing me, with a balloon, that I'm "now connected to a wired network" every damn time I log in?
8. Installing, uninstalling and updating applications. So long as you keep true to installing EVERYTHING through whatever your distro uses to manage packages, 95% of that stuff is as hard as respectively checking boxes on, checking boxes off and clicking on "Install updates". No, you don't even need to mindlessly pound through wizards on the Next button waiting for it to become Finish.
Ubuntu repositories are pretty slow to update to the latest versions. It's old news now, but I don't even know how long it took them to get GnuCash 2 into their repository. I actually stopped checking after a while.
Also, there is (or was) this really bizarre policy of only officially releasing the newest major versions of software with the next major release of the OS. They did this with Firefox 1.5, I think. Fuck that. I currently have Ubuntu 9.04 installed, but I don't use it enough to know if they've pulled their collective heads out of their asses on this front.
4. Where was the Narada when it was drilling Earth? It wasn't Saturn was it? If it was Earth, why didn't Earth (or did it?) get destroyed when the entire mass of the Red Matter destroyed the Narada?
Young Spock stole Spock Prime's ship, destroyed the drill, then warped away. The Narada went after him.
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon. It destroyed all future Star Treks. As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe.
Come on, man... The story wasn't hard to follow. You know why it was this way.
It's an alternate timeline. The "future events" of the Star Trek Universe are not destroyed; they're alive and well in another timeline. What kind of Star Trek fan are you?
The idea that code should be perfect is a stupid idea: consumers don't want that.
They want "good enough," not perfect. Perfect costs a great deal of money, probably 4X, and consumers will buy the good enough product, at 1/4 of that price, well beyond 95% of the time.
How is this different from any other product that people regularly pay for? Yet the makers of those products are still liable.
That's where MIME types come in to save you. While it is true that from the URL you can't tell the contents, the moment you do a "GET/file" the server will tell you...
And how will the server know? Yeah, a number of file formats include that information in their header, but there are plenty that don't. How would the server determine HTML from XHTML from CSS from JavaScript?
I'm not a citation, but I can attest to... problems... with dual-monitor support in Ubuntu. In all honesty, though, I suspect that the real problem may be Compiz. I haven't yet tried with it disabled.
Anyway... I can get the desktop wallpaper to display on both monitors. I can even move my mouse pointer back and forth between monitors. However, if I ever try to drag a window over to the secondary monitor, it instead flips to the second workspace upon reaching the edge of the primary monitor. The secondary monitor is essentially useless.
I have seen people give up on certain hardware because the benefits of GNU -- the developer-friendly environment, the reliability, the lack of restrictions on use, etc. -- far outweighed the benefits of having that hardware functional.
That really doesn't sound like your average user...
Breaking News: April Fools joke leaked on March 31st
Bah. This is just the evolution of online jouralism. In the same way that real-world media started pushing news out earlier and earlier, so too are online news sites adopting the trend in an attempt to get a jump on the competition./sigh
The USA is becoming more and more like a dictatorship.
While I agree that this is completely absurd, I think it's also important to moderate your indignation. This is just one asshole, not "the USA" as a whole.
Err... Both the current UAC and sudo are open to "social attacks".
Please remember that regular computer users will doubleclick on anything (including landmines) and will in general have no clue on what elevated privileges means.
It's the same for sudo. Your average user will simply be conditioned to type in their password when prompted.
I don't know a whole lot about Linux, but what's to stop an installer from firing off the command `sudo badshit.sh` and letting the user enter their password, which they've probably already grown accustomed to doing?
And this IS the correct way to do it.
Perhaps. Like you said above, though, your average use has no clue about permissions and privilege escalation. They aren't going to understand why the this awesome screensaver that they just have to check out won't install. They're going to call up tech support and ask them how to "fix" the problem.
Is it then tech support's job to prevent this user from installing a potentially malicious screensaver? No, of course not. They're simply going to tell the user to, let's say, "Right-click on the file, select "Run as Administrator...," then enter your password.
Microsoft modified *another company's products*. What's next? MS is going to start adding updates to VLC player or Utorrent or OpenOffice or WordPerfect?!?!? They shouldn't be messing with non-microsoft products.
I'd just like to point out that both VMWare Server 2 and Sun's Java Runtime Environment install Firefox ad-ons without permission and neither one gives any kind of helpful information as to why.
In the case of the JRE ad-on, it's reinstalled during every update...
Not that this excuses Microsoft, of course. I only point it out to add a little perspective to the situation.
The government will never shield you, only pretend to do so. This is a harbinger of dangers to come, and reason to demand with some vigor that your financial institution be held accountable by law for the protection of your information.
Bolding mine, to highlight a serious disconnect in the parent's preaching.
You're suggesting that people demand that banks be held accountable to laws enforced by the very government you said won't protect them?
Some of this argument seems to be based on a notion that all work must be rewarded, and that the reward MUST be monetary in nature. It does not always work that way.
No always, sure, but it'll never be significant. You don't see people being compensated for their work with houses, cars, clothes, utilities (water, electricity, etc.), and food...
Personally, I'd take money over these things. It gives me more freedom than I'd surely get if my company provided the above.
Cellular companies are willing to give you a phone if you sign up for a contract. That's free right?
Nope. Why do you think most providers make you sign a 2 year contract with severe penalties for early termination? How many people would be OK with signing a contract like that regarding employment? "We'll provide you with a car, but you have to remain employed with us for a period of two years. If you leave our company before your contract is up, not only do we take our car back, but we also take 25% of your wardrobe."
Isn't that exactly the kind of situation something called the "Live CD" was invented?So that you could check out whether all your hardware works before you install.Or was that too newbie for you?
That doesn't (or didn't) always work, strangely. I can't remember which version it was, but I booted the LiveCD of Ubuntu and I could browse the Internet just fine, but when I actually installed it... nothing.
Slashdot Mirror
If we see that Windows 7 is stable and worth the money we might begin to see a larger transition to it 6 months from now.
Umm... This is quite likely one of the reasons why Microsoft is allowing the Windows 7 RC to be used absolutely free for so long.
If you're at all interested in the stability and viability of Windows 7, you're either going to try it out yourself or check out the reviews of those who have.
They're giving you plenty of time to come to a conclusion before the release date.
Now their curious about how many accounts they actually got.
Actually, that was the submitter's comment, not the City Manager's comment.
The problem is they do not understand windows microsoft ended AT XP!
It's sadly amusing to see how the delay in Vista's release allowed people to forget what it was like when XP was released...
I'm in southwestern Pennsylvania (roughly Pittsburgh area) and I have my router set to use OpenDNS servers.
However, I get Firefox's standard "Page Load Error" page with a nonexistent domain, and www.opendns.com/welcome/ tells me I'm not using OpenDNS.
This used to work just fine.
Over 100 incidents in 9 years.. and how many auto incidents in the hour since you posted ?
Probably also "over 100". (You shouldn't have left that value open-ended. :oP )
Or, how about the "space dive", where they leaped out of a shuttlecraft and suddenly lost all their inertia? How about re-entering the atmosphere in a space-suit without any worries about friction or heat?
They actually got this right according to Phil "The Bad Astronomer" Plait: "Their speed was a little less than a kilometer per second, which sounds about right. At their altitude there wouldn't be much if any air to slow them, so they'd free fall; as they plunged deeper air resistance would slow them down. At first I thought they'd actually burn like meteors, but in reality (ha! Reality!) they weren't going that fast." (link)
For comparison, Shuttle re-entry speed is a little less than 8km/s.
Ummm, have you ever watched Star Trek before?
Heh. Nostalgia can do funny things to a person's memory.
5. Notifications that get out of the way. Ubuntu 9.04 doesn't need no frikkin' baloons [...]
Then why does it insist on informing me, with a balloon, that I'm "now connected to a wired network" every damn time I log in?
8. Installing, uninstalling and updating applications. So long as you keep true to installing EVERYTHING through whatever your distro uses to manage packages, 95% of that stuff is as hard as respectively checking boxes on, checking boxes off and clicking on "Install updates". No, you don't even need to mindlessly pound through wizards on the Next button waiting for it to become Finish.
Ubuntu repositories are pretty slow to update to the latest versions. It's old news now, but I don't even know how long it took them to get GnuCash 2 into their repository. I actually stopped checking after a while.
Also, there is (or was) this really bizarre policy of only officially releasing the newest major versions of software with the next major release of the OS. They did this with Firefox 1.5, I think. Fuck that. I currently have Ubuntu 9.04 installed, but I don't use it enough to know if they've pulled their collective heads out of their asses on this front.
4. Where was the Narada when it was drilling Earth? It wasn't Saturn was it? If it was Earth, why didn't Earth (or did it?) get destroyed when the entire mass of the Red Matter destroyed the Narada?
Young Spock stole Spock Prime's ship, destroyed the drill, then warped away. The Narada went after him.
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon. It destroyed all future Star Treks. As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe.
Come on, man... The story wasn't hard to follow. You know why it was this way.
It's an alternate timeline. The "future events" of the Star Trek Universe are not destroyed; they're alive and well in another timeline. What kind of Star Trek fan are you?
The idea that code should be perfect is a stupid idea: consumers don't want that.
They want "good enough," not perfect. Perfect costs a great deal of money, probably 4X, and consumers will buy the good enough product, at 1/4 of that price, well beyond 95% of the time.
How is this different from any other product that people regularly pay for? Yet the makers of those products are still liable.
That's where MIME types come in to save you. While it is true that from the URL you can't tell the contents, the moment you do a "GET /file" the server will tell you...
And how will the server know? Yeah, a number of file formats include that information in their header, but there are plenty that don't. How would the server determine HTML from XHTML from CSS from JavaScript?
Cite?
I'm not a citation, but I can attest to... problems... with dual-monitor support in Ubuntu. In all honesty, though, I suspect that the real problem may be Compiz. I haven't yet tried with it disabled.
Anyway... I can get the desktop wallpaper to display on both monitors. I can even move my mouse pointer back and forth between monitors. However, if I ever try to drag a window over to the secondary monitor, it instead flips to the second workspace upon reaching the edge of the primary monitor. The secondary monitor is essentially useless.
I have seen people give up on certain hardware because the benefits of GNU -- the developer-friendly environment, the reliability, the lack of restrictions on use, etc. -- far outweighed the benefits of having that hardware functional.
That really doesn't sound like your average user...
Breaking News: April Fools joke leaked on March 31st
Bah. This is just the evolution of online jouralism. In the same way that real-world media started pushing news out earlier and earlier, so too are online news sites adopting the trend in an attempt to get a jump on the competition. /sigh
...and thanks for all the Phish?
The USA is becoming more and more like a dictatorship.
While I agree that this is completely absurd, I think it's also important to moderate your indignation. This is just one asshole, not "the USA" as a whole.
No, this opens up for social attacks.
Err... Both the current UAC and sudo are open to "social attacks".
Please remember that regular computer users will doubleclick on anything (including landmines) and will in general have no clue on what elevated privileges means.
It's the same for sudo. Your average user will simply be conditioned to type in their password when prompted.
I don't know a whole lot about Linux, but what's to stop an installer from firing off the command `sudo badshit.sh` and letting the user enter their password, which they've probably already grown accustomed to doing?
And this IS the correct way to do it.
Perhaps. Like you said above, though, your average use has no clue about permissions and privilege escalation. They aren't going to understand why the this awesome screensaver that they just have to check out won't install. They're going to call up tech support and ask them how to "fix" the problem.
Is it then tech support's job to prevent this user from installing a potentially malicious screensaver? No, of course not. They're simply going to tell the user to, let's say, "Right-click on the file, select "Run as Administrator...," then enter your password.
I mentioned this during the discussion about the Microsoft add-on three weeks ago. How is this news now?
And it's been going on for longer than that; a few months at least.
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=921325&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=15
Not a big deal???
Microsoft modified *another company's products*. What's next? MS is going to start adding updates to VLC player or Utorrent or OpenOffice or WordPerfect?!?!? They shouldn't be messing with non-microsoft products.
I'd just like to point out that both VMWare Server 2 and Sun's Java Runtime Environment install Firefox ad-ons without permission and neither one gives any kind of helpful information as to why.
In the case of the JRE ad-on, it's reinstalled during every update...
Not that this excuses Microsoft, of course. I only point it out to add a little perspective to the situation.
Don't pirate these games. Stardock is trying to prove a point, that you don't need DRM to sell games.
I'm not sure how attempting to influence peoples' behavior to help prove a point actually proves that point...
Wtf? I did not post that anonymously...
The government will never shield you, only pretend to do so. This is a harbinger of dangers to come, and reason to demand with some vigor that your financial institution be held accountable by law for the protection of your information.
Bolding mine, to highlight a serious disconnect in the parent's preaching.
You're suggesting that people demand that banks be held accountable to laws enforced by the very government you said won't protect them?
Some of this argument seems to be based on a notion that all work must be rewarded, and that the reward MUST be monetary in nature. It does not always work that way.
No always, sure, but it'll never be significant. You don't see people being compensated for their work with houses, cars, clothes, utilities (water, electricity, etc.), and food...
Personally, I'd take money over these things. It gives me more freedom than I'd surely get if my company provided the above.
Nope. Why do you think most providers make you sign a 2 year contract with severe penalties for early termination? How many people would be OK with signing a contract like that regarding employment? "We'll provide you with a car, but you have to remain employed with us for a period of two years. If you leave our company before your contract is up, not only do we take our car back, but we also take 25% of your wardrobe."
No thanks.
Isn't that exactly the kind of situation something called the "Live CD" was invented?So that you could check out whether all your hardware works before you install.Or was that too newbie for you?
That doesn't (or didn't) always work, strangely. I can't remember which version it was, but I booted the LiveCD of Ubuntu and I could browse the Internet just fine, but when I actually installed it... nothing.