Why should wires that have been exposed to the sun be more expensive than ones that haven't been? I wouldn't've thought exposure to the sun would be particularly hard to achieve; and it would cost more to avoid it.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.... but if I can see the message, you can't be moderating in this article! Not much of a reign of terror, surely, is it?
I know! It's awful! All of my pieces of A4 paper now have unreliable edges: In fact, I have a page which is not even a known shape, having angles which do not add up. Possibly US letter paper is immune to this? I don't know; I have none around. I tried to get money out of the ATM this morning, but my card stopped fitting after OOXML was passed. It measures the same dimensions as it did previously, but without a reputable standards organisation behind it, the sizes cease to be the same when they are near. I am similarly concerned about the dimensions of my bike tyres. In fact, the ISO has included the BIPM's weights and measures in it, and time too; how can I be sure today's millimetres are as relevant as yesterdays? Even feet and inches are defined in terms of the ISO's metres; perhaps I shall have to revert to Newton's Parisian foot.
The characters on my computer screen, which I previously had encoded in ISO-8859-1 or ISO-10646, now correspond only randomly to the byte sequences they are represented as — how do you who reads this know it is what I have written? The various programming languages I work in no longer operate correctly (except for, ironically, C#); my computer and I cannot agree on the meaning of words or the syntax. I am sure I am using the same semantics and syntax this week as last, and the compilers show no indication of having changed, yet they fail.
No, the ISO no longer has any reputation. All these things and others besides have ceased to work because of it. One mistake — one inability to hold their own against the worst onslaught they have seen — and they are dead, and all they have done is for nought. Before the experiences this last week, I thought the rest of the world would not notice any problems and would force us geeks along with them. How wrong I was!
Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure if you understand my perspective. I say "The wrong thing happened" meaning "Because the rules at the time were wrong, a very unfortunate decision had to be made". I see no inconsistency between believing that the rules that exist should be upheld for as long as they exist, and believing that the rules that exist should be changed. I respect that the Supreme Court had to play by the rules. But I strongly feel that the rules themselves are wrong, and (once that became self-evident, as it did) the rules should've been changed as a matter of course, to take effect from the next election. I also didn't mean to criticise the supreme court for not saying "we should have held a new election, but we can't"; that wasn't in scope.
If I had been serving in the court at the time, I would've bound myself by the same rules they did. But now we have the benefit of hindsight and can see how we can improve the rules to avoid or reduce the same problems in the future.
That's exactly what I mean. People trust (or at least accept) things that they don't understand if they give the impression of working. Hence, a system that relies on biased people to work is going to have more biased and unbiased people cancelling out the biases, and will be safer.
No, absolutely not. Instead, upon realising there was a problem with the rules, the new president or congress, appointed under the existing rules, should've begun the process of changing the rules to get a better, less divisive outcome next time. The rules should be followed, but they should be changed until the rules reflect what should happen.
I hate it when people add superfluous or unnecessary words to their posts. That said, it makes it very annoying to have to read "that said" in hundreds of posts on Slashdot where it adds nothing. That said, it's superfluous because of course having said that, you've said it! In other words, I can tell you've said something by the fact that you've said it; you don't need to say "that said".
That said, "that said" can occasionally be useful when you're contradicting an earlier point. But it shouldn't be the usual way to do that, because it's way too overused and has lost all meaning, at least here on Slashdot.
That said, I've used it myself in that context. I immediately said ten "Hail Marys" and five "Our Fathers" to make up for the sin.
No, only if the result's unclear. If the result's disputed, recount. If the recount changes it from Hobbes by 6 votes to Calvin by 12, and Hobbes contests, and can put up a good enough case, then hold a new election.
And yes, if the constitution is wrong, I am fully and proudly in support of fixing it. There's a reason it has a process for amendment
You would be surprised at how reliable pens, paper and scrutineers are. Not perfection (screw with the votes instead of with the count), but a lot safer that "voting machines".
Also, the correct response to a vote no-one can agree on how it turns out is to hold another vote, not to say "no more recounts, Bush wins". It costs more, but the benefit of having everyone accept the result is worth more to democracy and in the long term the economy than a short-term saving.
UAC is basically sudo and like the root password prompts that come up under GUI in Linux, except that MS didn't think that it would make sense to prompt a user already designated as a admin to enter the password because the vast majority of their users run in a single user environment. If the user is not an admin, then the admin password is prompted for. Can your provide some references for how windows not properly com
What the? On Vista, you are always asked for an administrative password to do administrative stuff. If the current user is an admin, that's you're own password, otherwise it's a username/password combo. This is by default; Windows can be configured so administrators don't need to enter their password if a user is foolhardy enough.
On Ubuntu,[*] you are asked for your own password if you're a regular user with administrative rights (which lets you launch a program as root); and you are asked for your own password, but you'll always get an incorrect password prompt, if you're just a regular user. Root is disabled by default; but if a user is foolhardy enough they can enable it and use it as their regular user and never again be prompted for their password.
The Windows prompt comes up more frequently; if you have no write permissions to C:\Program Files\Random Third Party\Random.exe, but you try to copy a file on top of it, Windows will ask for an administrative password. On Ubuntu, if you have no write permissions to/opt/random/bin/random, it'll be denied; you'll need to use a console (sudo cp foo/opt/random/bin/random). In this regard Ubuntu assumes a user never needs to install third-party software or touch another user's files.
The Windows method is probably more convenient and the Linux method clearly has a bug, but not a security bug (if you won't ever be able to upgrade your privileges, it should just refuse). But considering you never log in as root on Linux, they're probably about equal, assuming the backends are secure.
[*]: I currently use Debian, so Ubuntu might've changed in some regards.
This page, which I use pretty often, doesn't work; try zooming/panning the map (e.g. enter search for reference 43 G7, then click the 4/6/zoom out/zoom in buttons and drag around). I use this site all the time and it was the one that meant I abandoned attempts to switch away from Gecko in spite of the problems it regularly & inconsistently causes me. Possibly it's fixed by now, but it also doesn't work in Opera either so I'm not holding my breath.
The fact that there's a lot of sites that work with just about any browser you can through at them doesn't mean there's no sites that don't. In fact, with all the Web 2.0 stuff I've found more sites plain don't work now in non-IE/non-Gecko than before (before a lot of sites worked, but didn't look right -- that's a different matter).
On Linux, Firefox (Gecko) isn't used because it generally works well; it's used because there's no practical alternative. I personally know no-one who prefers Firefox on Mac OS X where there's better options. (I've heard of people on the Internet who prefer Firefox, but I don't know them.) On Windows, which Firefox is targeted at, Firefox is probably the best choice.
Safari isn't available on Linux, no, but WebKit is. There's a lot of websites that only work with Firefox (Gecko) and Internet Explorer. If more people are using WebKit, that benefits me (and really everyone) by increasing the chance that when WebKit is stable I can use a browser based on it instead.
someone who was not paying attention (i.e. most computer users, unfortunately)
??? Why is it a bad thing that most computer users aren't paying attention? I'll agree that it's a bad thing when programmers and designers aren't paying attention to the way people will use their software, and produce stuff that expects the user to pay attention. But aside from that, I think your statement is 110 per cent wrong.
Yet, Slashdot is not of one mind and faith. To me, Mozilla is the worse evil because I can avoid Microsoft (and I have for six or seven years, having switched to Linux ten years ago), but I cannot successfully avoid Firefox. (Well, I can use Opera, but aside from the fact that it doesn't work with all sites, it also suffers a lot worse from some of the problems that make me dislike Firefox so.)
Safari becoming more popular is entirely to my benefit.
The Islamic Council of Victoria sued a Christian group over things they said during a service; I don't know what the Muslims wanted to get out of it, but apparently five years later the result an agreement that everything was all happiness and roses. I'm not aware of any other attempt to sue under this law, but in this particular case the law was much more divisive then just letting religious people speak; after the Islamic Council began to sue Catch the Fire Ministries, various Christian groups turned up to Muslim services to try and find any possible cause for them to sue in response.
On the other hand, under federal law Albert Langer was sent to jail for describing a way to vote in federal elections that was valid at the time.
Funny; we have similar laws here in the Australian state of Victoria. Christians generally oppose them, largely because it has made it harder for them to state their reasonably-held opinions of Muslims. (I mean, if you believed in one God the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, then surely you think Muslims are wrong, don't you?)
It's worth noting that free speech doesn't exist here except inasmuch as it's politically difficult to pass laws banning certain forms of speech. The state of Victoria has a charter of rights which merely states that the Parliament must consider such issues, and the Australian federal government has nothing even remotely similar.
Yet we join forces invading Iraq and Afghanistan saying we're giving them freedom.
This experience has cemented the view in my mind that there's no such thing as "god-given" or "constitutional" rights; the only rights we have are the ones we make sure we keep.
(To our credit, we were one of very few democracies that made it through the first half of the twentieth century without a disruption to the process — including changes of government (whichever party was in power in (September) 1914, 1917, 1940 and 1943 all lost the election); even the UK suspended elections.)
Slashdot Mirror
I know people who spend 45 minutes driving to work, one way. Thats 1:30 wasted in traffic.
You make it sound like that's remarkable.
Now I always thought grey was a color...
Why should wires that have been exposed to the sun be more expensive than ones that haven't been? I wouldn't've thought exposure to the sun would be particularly hard to achieve; and it would cost more to avoid it.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now. ... but if I can see the message, you can't be moderating in this article! Not much of a reign of terror, surely, is it?
I know! It's awful! All of my pieces of A4 paper now have unreliable edges: In fact, I have a page which is not even a known shape, having angles which do not add up. Possibly US letter paper is immune to this? I don't know; I have none around. I tried to get money out of the ATM this morning, but my card stopped fitting after OOXML was passed. It measures the same dimensions as it did previously, but without a reputable standards organisation behind it, the sizes cease to be the same when they are near. I am similarly concerned about the dimensions of my bike tyres. In fact, the ISO has included the BIPM's weights and measures in it, and time too; how can I be sure today's millimetres are as relevant as yesterdays? Even feet and inches are defined in terms of the ISO's metres; perhaps I shall have to revert to Newton's Parisian foot.
The characters on my computer screen, which I previously had encoded in ISO-8859-1 or ISO-10646, now correspond only randomly to the byte sequences they are represented as — how do you who reads this know it is what I have written? The various programming languages I work in no longer operate correctly (except for, ironically, C#); my computer and I cannot agree on the meaning of words or the syntax. I am sure I am using the same semantics and syntax this week as last, and the compilers show no indication of having changed, yet they fail.
No, the ISO no longer has any reputation. All these things and others besides have ceased to work because of it. One mistake — one inability to hold their own against the worst onslaught they have seen — and they are dead, and all they have done is for nought. Before the experiences this last week, I thought the rest of the world would not notice any problems and would force us geeks along with them. How wrong I was!
Yes, I understand that. I'm not sure if you understand my perspective. I say "The wrong thing happened" meaning "Because the rules at the time were wrong, a very unfortunate decision had to be made". I see no inconsistency between believing that the rules that exist should be upheld for as long as they exist, and believing that the rules that exist should be changed. I respect that the Supreme Court had to play by the rules. But I strongly feel that the rules themselves are wrong, and (once that became self-evident, as it did) the rules should've been changed as a matter of course, to take effect from the next election. I also didn't mean to criticise the supreme court for not saying "we should have held a new election, but we can't"; that wasn't in scope.
If I had been serving in the court at the time, I would've bound myself by the same rules they did. But now we have the benefit of hindsight and can see how we can improve the rules to avoid or reduce the same problems in the future.
I don't think the Supreme Court is allowed to have an opinion on what the rules should be. That's where we diverge.
That's exactly what I mean. People trust (or at least accept) things that they don't understand if they give the impression of working. Hence, a system that relies on biased people to work is going to have more biased and unbiased people cancelling out the biases, and will be safer.
No, absolutely not. Instead, upon realising there was a problem with the rules, the new president or congress, appointed under the existing rules, should've begun the process of changing the rules to get a better, less divisive outcome next time. The rules should be followed, but they should be changed until the rules reflect what should happen.
I hate it when people add superfluous or unnecessary words to their posts. That said, it makes it very annoying to have to read "that said" in hundreds of posts on Slashdot where it adds nothing. That said, it's superfluous because of course having said that, you've said it! In other words, I can tell you've said something by the fact that you've said it; you don't need to say "that said".
That said, "that said" can occasionally be useful when you're contradicting an earlier point. But it shouldn't be the usual way to do that, because it's way too overused and has lost all meaning, at least here on Slashdot.
That said, I've used it myself in that context. I immediately said ten "Hail Marys" and five "Our Fathers" to make up for the sin.
No, only if the result's unclear. If the result's disputed, recount. If the recount changes it from Hobbes by 6 votes to Calvin by 12, and Hobbes contests, and can put up a good enough case, then hold a new election.
And yes, if the constitution is wrong, I am fully and proudly in support of fixing it. There's a reason it has a process for amendment
What? I never suggested that at all. Given we're talking about a democracy, following the people's choice is a better solution than unelected judges.
You would be surprised at how reliable pens, paper and scrutineers are. Not perfection (screw with the votes instead of with the count), but a lot safer that "voting machines".
Also, the correct response to a vote no-one can agree on how it turns out is to hold another vote, not to say "no more recounts, Bush wins". It costs more, but the benefit of having everyone accept the result is worth more to democracy and in the long term the economy than a short-term saving.
Oh, you're right. I mistook the prompt for the password request.
UAC is basically sudo and like the root password prompts that come up under GUI in Linux, except that MS didn't think that it would make sense to prompt a user already designated as a admin to enter the password because the vast majority of their users run in a single user environment. If the user is not an admin, then the admin password is prompted for. Can your provide some references for how windows not properly com
/opt/random/bin/random, it'll be denied; you'll need to use a console (sudo cp foo /opt/random/bin/random). In this regard Ubuntu assumes a user never needs to install third-party software or touch another user's files.
What the? On Vista, you are always asked for an administrative password to do administrative stuff. If the current user is an admin, that's you're own password, otherwise it's a username/password combo. This is by default; Windows can be configured so administrators don't need to enter their password if a user is foolhardy enough.
On Ubuntu,[*] you are asked for your own password if you're a regular user with administrative rights (which lets you launch a program as root); and you are asked for your own password, but you'll always get an incorrect password prompt, if you're just a regular user. Root is disabled by default; but if a user is foolhardy enough they can enable it and use it as their regular user and never again be prompted for their password.
The Windows prompt comes up more frequently; if you have no write permissions to C:\Program Files\Random Third Party\Random.exe, but you try to copy a file on top of it, Windows will ask for an administrative password. On Ubuntu, if you have no write permissions to
The Windows method is probably more convenient and the Linux method clearly has a bug, but not a security bug (if you won't ever be able to upgrade your privileges, it should just refuse). But considering you never log in as root on Linux, they're probably about equal, assuming the backends are secure.
[*]: I currently use Debian, so Ubuntu might've changed in some regards.
This page, which I use pretty often, doesn't work; try zooming/panning the map (e.g. enter search for reference 43 G7, then click the 4/6/zoom out/zoom in buttons and drag around). I use this site all the time and it was the one that meant I abandoned attempts to switch away from Gecko in spite of the problems it regularly & inconsistently causes me. Possibly it's fixed by now, but it also doesn't work in Opera either so I'm not holding my breath.
The fact that there's a lot of sites that work with just about any browser you can through at them doesn't mean there's no sites that don't. In fact, with all the Web 2.0 stuff I've found more sites plain don't work now in non-IE/non-Gecko than before (before a lot of sites worked, but didn't look right -- that's a different matter).
I have no problem with the open-source Firefox, knowing that if anything really bothered me with it I could edit it myself and recompile.
Are you serious? Have you tried doing that?
On Linux, Firefox (Gecko) isn't used because it generally works well; it's used because there's no practical alternative. I personally know no-one who prefers Firefox on Mac OS X where there's better options. (I've heard of people on the Internet who prefer Firefox, but I don't know them.) On Windows, which Firefox is targeted at, Firefox is probably the best choice.
Safari isn't available on Linux, no, but WebKit is. There's a lot of websites that only work with Firefox (Gecko) and Internet Explorer. If more people are using WebKit, that benefits me (and really everyone) by increasing the chance that when WebKit is stable I can use a browser based on it instead.
someone who was not paying attention (i.e. most computer users, unfortunately)
??? Why is it a bad thing that most computer users aren't paying attention? I'll agree that it's a bad thing when programmers and designers aren't paying attention to the way people will use their software, and produce stuff that expects the user to pay attention. But aside from that, I think your statement is 110 per cent wrong.
Doesn't iTunes use WebKit to display the music store? (My understanding is that Safari is essentially just a wrapper around the WebKit libraries.)
Yet, Slashdot is not of one mind and faith. To me, Mozilla is the worse evil because I can avoid Microsoft (and I have for six or seven years, having switched to Linux ten years ago), but I cannot successfully avoid Firefox. (Well, I can use Opera, but aside from the fact that it doesn't work with all sites, it also suffers a lot worse from some of the problems that make me dislike Firefox so.)
Safari becoming more popular is entirely to my benefit.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Why and how? Seven per post seems awfully inefficient.
The Islamic Council of Victoria sued a Christian group over things they said during a service; I don't know what the Muslims wanted to get out of it, but apparently five years later the result an agreement that everything was all happiness and roses. I'm not aware of any other attempt to sue under this law, but in this particular case the law was much more divisive then just letting religious people speak; after the Islamic Council began to sue Catch the Fire Ministries, various Christian groups turned up to Muslim services to try and find any possible cause for them to sue in response.
On the other hand, under federal law Albert Langer was sent to jail for describing a way to vote in federal elections that was valid at the time.
Funny; we have similar laws here in the Australian state of Victoria. Christians generally oppose them, largely because it has made it harder for them to state their reasonably-held opinions of Muslims. (I mean, if you believed in one God the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, and in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, and who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, then surely you think Muslims are wrong, don't you?)
It's worth noting that free speech doesn't exist here except inasmuch as it's politically difficult to pass laws banning certain forms of speech. The state of Victoria has a charter of rights which merely states that the Parliament must consider such issues, and the Australian federal government has nothing even remotely similar.
Yet we join forces invading Iraq and Afghanistan saying we're giving them freedom.
This experience has cemented the view in my mind that there's no such thing as "god-given" or "constitutional" rights; the only rights we have are the ones we make sure we keep.
(To our credit, we were one of very few democracies that made it through the first half of the twentieth century without a disruption to the process — including changes of government (whichever party was in power in (September) 1914, 1917, 1940 and 1943 all lost the election); even the UK suspended elections.)