But I'm wondering what exactly the cron job does... is it just a highly complex substitute for a light timer, or does it do things like turn off lights in sequence or something?
Microsoft hereby grants Company a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, personal, transferable, non-sublicensable, license under its Necessary Claims to (1) make, use, import, and (2) offer to sell, sell and distribute, directly or indirectly, to End Users, Company Implementations that fully comply with the Technical Reference...
"End User" shall mean a third party customer or potential customer to whom a copy of Company Implementation is licensed, delivered, or otherwise provided primarily for such customer's or potential customer's use, and not for further sublicense or distribution.
You can't sublicense the Company Implementation. I think releasing to PD would count as 'sublicensing'.
Point. Although I wouldn't consider "being able to send e-mail anonymously" to be a prime usage of e-mail, whereas "being able to obtain files shared by strangers" is a prime usage of file-sharing. In terms of actual privacy, neither means is effective, as both reveal your IP. If you want privacy, go to an Internet Cafe and set up an anonymous webmail account. (I don't think privacy is really a huge concern for file sharers: their use of file sharing is well known to their ISPs, and millions of neophytes who signed up with Napster used their real names for the signup forms.)
Let's try another one...
Shutting down Open Relays doesn't require the law to get involved: market forces will make sure that companies with Open Relays will be punished. Making sending spam harder benefits orders of magnitude more people/customers than it hurts. Companies that allow them will find themselves losing money. Customers that recieve spam, or can't send legitimate mail, will flock to other ISPs.
Shutting down file sharing, OTOH, benefits a tiny minority (record companies) at the expense of millions of people/customers. Companies that shut them down will find themselves losing money as customers flock to ISPs that allow them.
Thus, ISPs won't shut it down without The Law stepping in. And as soon as The Law steps in, things become a lot more complicated. There is no freedom to try another way; the right answer cannot evolve on its own. When The Law steps in, it's way things are, and there's nothing you can do about it.
So an important difference is whether The Law controls what gets shut down, or whever it's simply a company's policy - which can be fought using the power of open markets.
Of course, people will still complain if the major high-speed consumer ISPs shut down file sharing, but that's because the choices for high-speed consumer access are currently limited to two: The Cable Company and The Phone Company, both government-issued monopolies.
And, of course, some people will bitch no matter what.;)
But the points are: - blocking open relaying benefits the many at the expense of the few - blocking file sharing benefits the few at the expense of the many - open relaying is shut down due to natural market forces - file sharing is shut down due to government interference in natural market forces
That's in addition to... - blocking open relays doesn't affect (most) legitimate e-mail uses - blocking file sharing completely blocks legitimate, as well as illegitimate, file sharing.
Well, part of the problem is a matter of practicality. It is very easy to enable SMTP authentication. It is not very easy to have a system that checks to make sure every song that's transmitted is legal.
One can close Open Relays without affecting their intended use (ie. With authentication, friends/client/whoever can still send e-mail). One cannot shut down sharing copyrighted files without shutting down ALL file sharing.
Every version of Windows has a version number, and a build number (ie. Windows 2000 is NT Version 5.0 build 2195). Microsoft has just decided they're easier to market with all these other names. "Windows XP" is something new, "Windows 5.1" is just another minor upgrade.
Names like Longhorn are just internal codenames, just like, say, Debian Potato.
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 4.0 = Windows 95
Windows 4.1 = Windows 98
Windows 4.9 = Windows Me
Windows 98 SE was version 4.1 with a higher build number than Windows 98
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 5.0 = Windows 2000
Windows NT 5.1 = Windows XP
- There will probably be an XP Second Edition, which'll be version 5.1 with a higher build number
- Longhorn will probably be version 5.2. Who knows what'll actually be called - XP wasn't decided on till last spring.
- Blackcomb will probably be version 6.0
If a comment below my threshold has a child which is above my threshold, I think that should be clearer; ideally, in between the visible grandparent and the visible child should be a link to the invisible parent.
Try putting your Threshold to zero, your Highlight Threshold to +3 (or whatever) and your Spill to something like 1. Works for me...
The battle of privacy and safety is going to begin in earnest now.
Typical response in political issues, and part of the reason politics is so devisive.
Battle *between* privacy and safety? Good god, are you saying we have to pick a side? "I'm for privacy!" "I'm for safety!"
Stop devoting your time to "winning battles." Start devoting your time to finding solutions "both" "sides" can be happy with.
One, it's the only way everyone will be happy.
Two, it'll come up with a better solution overall than either side will come up with individually.
Three, if you try to fight the concrete consequence of 5000 people dead versus what most will perceive as the largely abstract consequences of the government being able to read your encrypted data, you're going to lose. This isn't something like the DMCA, where it's liberty vs. record companies. This is liberty vs. public safety, and for many people, in many instances, public safety will be more important.
Especially since they're changing the form factor for the next generation of P4 (Northwood, due in November), so current Pentium 4 motherboards are simply a dead end.
AMD has promised to make future Athlons at least for the next couple of years compatible with current Athlon MB's (perhaps with a BIOS update) but current Pentium 4 motherboards will be incompatible with anything on the market very soon. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
The flaw is available in http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/nukesoftware.txt
Basically, random errors appear in this structure:
DECLARE @X int, @T varchar (255), @R int
select @X = 0
SELECT @X = id FROM sysobjects
WHERE id > @X AND type = 'P'
ORDER BY id DESC
select @R = @@ROWCOUNT
/*** COMMENT: Printing our resulting value of @X and @R ***/
select @T = 'Resulting value of @X = ' + convert(varchar, @X)
PRINT @T
select @T = 'Number of records in data set @R = ' + convert(varchar, @R)
PRINT @T
GO
The values of @X come out randomly wrong. The give a few examples of stored procedures which use that structure, and suggested workarounds.
They all work fine on my SQL2k box (damn well hope so since they recommended an upgrade to fix it;)... I'd be interested in what someone with a SQL6.5 box generated. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
if the bug isn't in Microsoft's software, as they contend, then why did they tell the Russians to upgrade to a newer version to solve the problem???
They never said it wasn't a bug. They offered a workaround and said the the bug doesn't exist in the new version.
After they decided that it would be too much work use the workaround, the Russians opted for the new version, didn't RTFM, and then went around screaming "security flaw!"
So they had a valid complaint about the bug in SQL Server 6.5, but then showed a complete lack of knowledge of NT and SQL Server with the second flaw.
I don't know how the first bug does in comparison to, say, Oracle databases (although I bet in several-year-old databases from them, there are a few SQL constructs you should avoid), but it is clearly a bug; and Microsoft never denied that, although in this article they denied that it affected the US Systems, which is believable - the US developers could have avoided (either deliberatly or by chance) the construct which caused the flaw, which the Russians did not. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
If you check the referenced source material you'll find that, in fact, there were severe bugs related solely to Microsoft's SQL Server which have not only compromised the Russian nuclear tracking system, but even more severely compromised the American nuclear tracking system
Er, from your source...
Then, in early 2000, they did something they didn't have to do: They warned the United States, believing that an analogous risk must exist in the U.S. system. Although neither Los Alamos nor the U.S. Department of Energy has publicly acknowledged the possibility that innumerable files on American nuclear materials might have disappeared, the Russian warning caused shock waves at the highest levels of the Energy Department.
From the newer, more recent article...
They say the bug that caused data to become invisible did exist, but was limited to one Russian facility that customized accounting software the lab had donated.
You may dismiss the second article if you wish, but since the first article said "maybe" and had scant technical details (no reference to SQL Server, for example), and the second article was more recent and much more precise in detailing the problems, I'd take it as credible. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Yeah, but for each one you have to click through 3 times just to get the file. Which means:
a) it's really annoying, and lots of people just won't bother, and...
b) it's really easy to miss one or two
And there's no real way to check (there's a dinky little script available somewhere that'll check for IIS patches, but it's buggy and hard to find).
The Corporate Windows Update site makes them easier to download, but it takes weeks for patches to be put up on it after they've been released, and there's no real way to match them with the associated Bulletins (to know if they need to be re-downloaded, if you've missed any, etc.) And it doesn't allow searching by Service Pack.
In this case, Microsoft's system is just sloppy and unprofessional. There's absolutely no reason for this to be such a pain other than Microsoft isn't putting enough money and attention into its support structure.
Sure, they now allow Patches to be joined together so you only have to reboot once for multiple patches and they allow you to search by Service Pack, but those are baby steps that should've been done years ago... patches today should be instantly updated over the web and shouldn't require reboots in 99% of cases (for all IIS patches, it should just shut down IIS, update the files, and restart). Microsoft's behind the curve, and if I was a corporate system admin, I'd be tempted to switch to Red Hat just because they have a much better update structure.
(For instance, with Red Hat, you type up2date, it launches a graphical wizard which automatically tells you what you need updated, downloads, and installs them. It's like four mouse clicks to completely update your system to latest versions of everything on it.) -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Microsoft doesn't put most security patches on Windows Update. They have a Corporate Windows Update (http://corporate.windowsupdate.microsoft.com), but it's basically just another download site... it doesn't automatically tell you what you need or install it for you.
Not that keeping up to date on patches is very difficult (subscribe to their Security Bulletin at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/notify.asp), but since they obviously have the Update technology down pat, I don't know why they don't have a version of Windows Update with *all* the hotfixes, not just the "consumer-friendly" ones. It would certainly make setting up new machines easier... instead of downloading and installing twenty files, you should be able to just go to their site and have it do the work for you.
They haven't really changed Windows Update since it was introduced with Windows 98 - they've really dropped the ball... Redhat's up2date and Ximian's Red Carpet are both quite a bit better than the current implementation of Windows Update. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
True innovation in music comes from balanced people who don't think "waaah, I am sad, let's write a song" is a valid artistic statement.
No, that's how you get "adult contemporary."
Truely innovative artists (in any field) are usually fucked up in one way or another. They're rarely whiney adolescents, but they're very rarely "balanced." -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Something that should probably be addressed... It says "There are many other factors, but I've found no evidence that they usually cancel the factors listed here." Well, obviously Microsoft and Sun have in their TCO articles, so if you want to rebutt them, you're going to have to find either (a) evidence that they don't cancel the "price of software" factors or (b) show the evidence that Sun/Microsoft present to be flawed. Saying "I've found no evidence" proves nothing. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
that people with formal musical training are going to pick up on small details (like the valves on the clarinet) that J. Random User won't
I think part of the point of the article was that although we not be *consciously* aware of such things, the subtle nuances do make a difference in the quality of the music we're listening to, whether we notice them or not. They probably have a greater affect, in fact, if we don't consciously notice they're there. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
to my knowledge, there isn't an astronaut who has flown on both who could give an account on the life aboard the two stations, and objectively determine whether or not the ISS is an improvement or not.
Most of the Russians on ISS, as well as several NASA astronauts, were also crew on MIR.
Now, actually getting an objective opinion out of them might be hard... I've seen a few clips with them 'oohing' and 'ahhing' about the spaciousness when the non-Russian modules were attached, but that's about it... and the Russian commander of the current team up there isn't keeping a log. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
As much as the Athlon people tout their shit as superior, and it took them HOW long to do SMP ?
Well, don't forget that before the Athlon less than two years ago, AMD was always playing catch-up with Intel; Intel was always the performance leader. Now that AMD has arguably grabbed the performance crown, it makes sense for them to put in the support for SMP. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
That's why they added an optional "auto clean desktop" feature which every 60 days will offer to clean up some of the least-used icons and put them in a folder on the desktop. Which, of course, will be flamed left and right by/.ers, but is a completely good idea for your typical user, who leave every icon RealPlayer and whoever else choose to put on the desktop.
Also, the interface is totally set up to drive people to use the 'My Documents' etc. folders.
There a tons of little things like that in the XP interface which skilled computer people will turn off or not notice, but really make a difference in making the thing less confusing to the non-techie. (Another example is the ability to lock and unlock taskbar items, so they don't automatically drag them off the screen or whatever... which a/.er would never even think of doing, but would be totally confusing to a neophyte.) -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Yet I'm yet to hear of a coder who brings in almost half a million dollars in salary. Instead I hear of good coders making about $10K or so more than mediocre HTML jockeys and VB h4x0rs. It continually astounds me that the U.S. claims to be a capitalist society but in this one area we act like everyone is equal when they clearly are not.
It is a capitalist society: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
A true capitalist society ends up being very close to a plutocracy... money & power go to those with money. What you want is a meritocracy... money & power to go those with talent.
Anyway, people make that much all the time in Silicon Valley and such. They made a lot more before the market crashed and their stock options became useless... -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
My prediction: global warming will become the first issue of science and politics that captures the imagination of large numbers of American voters... They read that skin cancer rates are rising.
Well, the skin cancer rates are due all the CFC's eating the ozone layer, which was a pretty big deal a decade or so ago.
It's a good prelude the global warming battle, but an easier one - the scientific evidence was a lot more definitive, and not nearly as many industries were affected by the required solution ("Ban cfc's, use alternatives.") -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
But here, we're talking about a web app which has already been released under the GPL. Say someone wrote a GPL version of a Passport-like authentication scheme. Under the current GPL licensing options, Evil Propietary Company could take that code and embrace-and-entend it on their own Passport servers without releasing those changes.
I'm sure lots of Open Source web app programmers would like an option to prevent that from happening to their code; to make sure their code is protected by the same "share and share alike" free software spirit that other Open Source code is protected by. -- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
I dunno... it's more than just, say, a word document. If you've got web app that, say, does your taxes, or converts your image files, or gives you a fully-functional word processor, the level of interaction is far beyond that of simply "output". If you or your business were dependent on that functionality, you should have the freedom to have the code so you're not dependent on your service provider.
Although I don't think it should be covered by the GPL; there should probably be a special GPL variant (WGPL?) to cover the special circumstances of web apps.
-- Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Slashdot Mirror
Pretty damn neat. ;)
But I'm wondering what exactly the cron job does... is it just a highly complex substitute for a light timer, or does it do things like turn off lights in sequence or something?
I quite CompuServe EIGHT YEARS ago, and they still haven't deleted my old CS webpage. Hell of a tight ship they run there. ;)
"End User" shall mean a third party customer or potential customer to whom a copy of Company Implementation is licensed, delivered, or otherwise provided primarily for such customer's or potential customer's use, and not for further sublicense or distribution.
You can't sublicense the Company Implementation. I think releasing to PD would count as 'sublicensing'.
Point. Although I wouldn't consider "being able to send e-mail anonymously" to be a prime usage of e-mail, whereas "being able to obtain files shared by strangers" is a prime usage of file-sharing. In terms of actual privacy, neither means is effective, as both reveal your IP. If you want privacy, go to an Internet Cafe and set up an anonymous webmail account. (I don't think privacy is really a huge concern for file sharers: their use of file sharing is well known to their ISPs, and millions of neophytes who signed up with Napster used their real names for the signup forms.)
;)
Let's try another one...
Shutting down Open Relays doesn't require the law to get involved: market forces will make sure that companies with Open Relays will be punished. Making sending spam harder benefits orders of magnitude more people/customers than it hurts. Companies that allow them will find themselves losing money. Customers that recieve spam, or can't send legitimate mail, will flock to other ISPs.
Shutting down file sharing, OTOH, benefits a tiny minority (record companies) at the expense of millions of people/customers. Companies that shut them down will find themselves losing money as customers flock to ISPs that allow them.
Thus, ISPs won't shut it down without The Law stepping in. And as soon as The Law steps in, things become a lot more complicated. There is no freedom to try another way; the right answer cannot evolve on its own. When The Law steps in, it's way things are, and there's nothing you can do about it.
So an important difference is whether The Law controls what gets shut down, or whever it's simply a company's policy - which can be fought using the power of open markets.
Of course, people will still complain if the major high-speed consumer ISPs shut down file sharing, but that's because the choices for high-speed consumer access are currently limited to two: The Cable Company and The Phone Company, both government-issued monopolies.
And, of course, some people will bitch no matter what.
But the points are:
- blocking open relaying benefits the many at the expense of the few
- blocking file sharing benefits the few at the expense of the many
- open relaying is shut down due to natural market forces
- file sharing is shut down due to government interference in natural market forces
That's in addition to...
- blocking open relays doesn't affect (most) legitimate e-mail uses
- blocking file sharing completely blocks legitimate, as well as illegitimate, file sharing.
Well, part of the problem is a matter of practicality. It is very easy to enable SMTP authentication. It is not very easy to have a system that checks to make sure every song that's transmitted is legal.
One can close Open Relays without affecting their intended use (ie. With authentication, friends/client/whoever can still send e-mail). One cannot shut down sharing copyrighted files without shutting down ALL file sharing.
You can delete the references to the Messenger object in the registry. It leaves Messenger unaffected but disables the web object.
1 -0 0C04F795683}
4 -0 000F875C541}
Remove the following registry keys:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{F3A614DC-ABE0-11d2-A44
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{FB7199AB-79BF-11d2-8D9
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Messenger.MsgrObject
and there's another Messenger.* object, but I forget what it was... but if you get the CLSIDs that should cover it...
You can just rename them to backup_FB7199AB-79BF-11d2-8D94-0000F875C541 or whatever if you want to be cautious.
You'll need to remove them again if you upgrade or reinstall - it'll put the references back.
Every version of Windows has a version number, and a build number (ie. Windows 2000 is NT Version 5.0 build 2195). Microsoft has just decided they're easier to market with all these other names. "Windows XP" is something new, "Windows 5.1" is just another minor upgrade.
Names like Longhorn are just internal codenames, just like, say, Debian Potato.
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 4.0 = Windows 95
Windows 4.1 = Windows 98
Windows 4.9 = Windows Me
Windows 98 SE was version 4.1 with a higher build number than Windows 98
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 5.0 = Windows 2000
Windows NT 5.1 = Windows XP
- There will probably be an XP Second Edition, which'll be version 5.1 with a higher build number
- Longhorn will probably be version 5.2. Who knows what'll actually be called - XP wasn't decided on till last spring.
- Blackcomb will probably be version 6.0
If a comment below my threshold has a child which is above my threshold, I think that should be clearer; ideally, in between the visible grandparent and the visible child should be a link to the invisible parent.
Try putting your Threshold to zero, your Highlight Threshold to +3 (or whatever) and your Spill to something like 1. Works for me...
The battle of privacy and safety is going to begin in earnest now.
Typical response in political issues, and part of the reason politics is so devisive.
Battle *between* privacy and safety? Good god, are you saying we have to pick a side? "I'm for privacy!" "I'm for safety!"
Stop devoting your time to "winning battles." Start devoting your time to finding solutions "both" "sides" can be happy with.
One, it's the only way everyone will be happy.
Two, it'll come up with a better solution overall than either side will come up with individually.
Three, if you try to fight the concrete consequence of 5000 people dead versus what most will perceive as the largely abstract consequences of the government being able to read your encrypted data, you're going to lose. This isn't something like the DMCA, where it's liberty vs. record companies. This is liberty vs. public safety, and for many people, in many instances, public safety will be more important.
Especially since they're changing the form factor for the next generation of P4 (Northwood, due in November), so current Pentium 4 motherboards are simply a dead end.
AMD has promised to make future Athlons at least for the next couple of years compatible with current Athlon MB's (perhaps with a BIOS update) but current Pentium 4 motherboards will be incompatible with anything on the market very soon.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
The flaw is available in http://www.cdi.org/nuclear/nukesoftware.txt
;)... I'd be interested in what someone with a SQL6.5 box generated.
Basically, random errors appear in this structure:
DECLARE @X int, @T varchar (255), @R int
select @X = 0
SELECT @X = id FROM sysobjects
WHERE id > @X AND type = 'P'
ORDER BY id DESC
select @R = @@ROWCOUNT
/*** COMMENT: Printing our resulting value of @X and @R ***/
select @T = 'Resulting value of @X = ' + convert(varchar, @X)
PRINT @T
select @T = 'Number of records in data set @R = ' + convert(varchar, @R)
PRINT @T
GO
The values of @X come out randomly wrong. The give a few examples of stored procedures which use that structure, and suggested workarounds.
They all work fine on my SQL2k box (damn well hope so since they recommended an upgrade to fix it
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
if the bug isn't in Microsoft's software, as they contend, then why did they tell the Russians to upgrade to a newer version to solve the problem???
They never said it wasn't a bug. They offered a workaround and said the the bug doesn't exist in the new version.
After they decided that it would be too much work use the workaround, the Russians opted for the new version, didn't RTFM, and then went around screaming "security flaw!"
So they had a valid complaint about the bug in SQL Server 6.5, but then showed a complete lack of knowledge of NT and SQL Server with the second flaw.
I don't know how the first bug does in comparison to, say, Oracle databases (although I bet in several-year-old databases from them, there are a few SQL constructs you should avoid), but it is clearly a bug; and Microsoft never denied that, although in this article they denied that it affected the US Systems, which is believable - the US developers could have avoided (either deliberatly or by chance) the construct which caused the flaw, which the Russians did not.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
If you check the referenced source material you'll find that, in fact, there were severe bugs related solely to Microsoft's SQL Server which have not only compromised the Russian nuclear tracking system, but even more severely compromised the American nuclear tracking system
Er, from your source...
Then, in early 2000, they did something they didn't have to do: They warned the United States, believing that an analogous risk must exist in the U.S. system. Although neither Los Alamos nor the U.S. Department of Energy has publicly acknowledged the possibility that innumerable files on American nuclear materials might have disappeared, the Russian warning caused shock waves at the highest levels of the Energy Department.
From the newer, more recent article...
They say the bug that caused data to become invisible did exist, but was limited to one Russian facility that customized accounting software the lab had donated.
You may dismiss the second article if you wish, but since the first article said "maybe" and had scant technical details (no reference to SQL Server, for example), and the second article was more recent and much more precise in detailing the problems, I'd take it as credible.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Yeah, but for each one you have to click through 3 times just to get the file. Which means:
a) it's really annoying, and lots of people just won't bother, and...
b) it's really easy to miss one or two
And there's no real way to check (there's a dinky little script available somewhere that'll check for IIS patches, but it's buggy and hard to find).
The Corporate Windows Update site makes them easier to download, but it takes weeks for patches to be put up on it after they've been released, and there's no real way to match them with the associated Bulletins (to know if they need to be re-downloaded, if you've missed any, etc.) And it doesn't allow searching by Service Pack.
In this case, Microsoft's system is just sloppy and unprofessional. There's absolutely no reason for this to be such a pain other than Microsoft isn't putting enough money and attention into its support structure.
Sure, they now allow Patches to be joined together so you only have to reboot once for multiple patches and they allow you to search by Service Pack, but those are baby steps that should've been done years ago... patches today should be instantly updated over the web and shouldn't require reboots in 99% of cases (for all IIS patches, it should just shut down IIS, update the files, and restart). Microsoft's behind the curve, and if I was a corporate system admin, I'd be tempted to switch to Red Hat just because they have a much better update structure.
(For instance, with Red Hat, you type up2date, it launches a graphical wizard which automatically tells you what you need updated, downloads, and installs them. It's like four mouse clicks to completely update your system to latest versions of everything on it.)
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Microsoft doesn't put most security patches on Windows Update. They have a Corporate Windows Update (http://corporate.windowsupdate.microsoft.com), but it's basically just another download site... it doesn't automatically tell you what you need or install it for you.
n /notify.asp), but since they obviously have the Update technology down pat, I don't know why they don't have a version of Windows Update with *all* the hotfixes, not just the "consumer-friendly" ones. It would certainly make setting up new machines easier... instead of downloading and installing twenty files, you should be able to just go to their site and have it do the work for you.
Not that keeping up to date on patches is very difficult (subscribe to their Security Bulletin at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulleti
They haven't really changed Windows Update since it was introduced with Windows 98 - they've really dropped the ball... Redhat's up2date and Ximian's Red Carpet are both quite a bit better than the current implementation of Windows Update.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
True innovation in music comes from balanced people who don't think "waaah, I am sad, let's write a song" is a valid artistic statement.
No, that's how you get "adult contemporary."
Truely innovative artists (in any field) are usually fucked up in one way or another. They're rarely whiney adolescents, but they're very rarely "balanced."
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Something that should probably be addressed... It says "There are many other factors, but I've found no evidence that they usually cancel the factors listed here." Well, obviously Microsoft and Sun have in their TCO articles, so if you want to rebutt them, you're going to have to find either (a) evidence that they don't cancel the "price of software" factors or (b) show the evidence that Sun/Microsoft present to be flawed. Saying "I've found no evidence" proves nothing.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
that people with formal musical training are going to pick up on small details (like the valves on the clarinet) that J. Random User won't
I think part of the point of the article was that although we not be *consciously* aware of such things, the subtle nuances do make a difference in the quality of the music we're listening to, whether we notice them or not. They probably have a greater affect, in fact, if we don't consciously notice they're there.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
to my knowledge, there isn't an astronaut who has flown on both who could give an account on the life aboard the two stations, and objectively determine whether or not the ISS is an improvement or not.
Most of the Russians on ISS, as well as several NASA astronauts, were also crew on MIR.
Now, actually getting an objective opinion out of them might be hard... I've seen a few clips with them 'oohing' and 'ahhing' about the spaciousness when the non-Russian modules were attached, but that's about it... and the Russian commander of the current team up there isn't keeping a log.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
As much as the Athlon people tout their shit as superior, and it took them HOW long to do SMP ?
Well, don't forget that before the Athlon less than two years ago, AMD was always playing catch-up with Intel; Intel was always the performance leader. Now that AMD has arguably grabbed the performance crown, it makes sense for them to put in the support for SMP.
--
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
That's why they added an optional "auto clean desktop" feature which every 60 days will offer to clean up some of the least-used icons and put them in a folder on the desktop. Which, of course, will be flamed left and right by /.ers, but is a completely good idea for your typical user, who leave every icon RealPlayer and whoever else choose to put on the desktop.
/.er would never even think of doing, but would be totally confusing to a neophyte.)
Also, the interface is totally set up to drive people to use the 'My Documents' etc. folders.
There a tons of little things like that in the XP interface which skilled computer people will turn off or not notice, but really make a difference in making the thing less confusing to the non-techie. (Another example is the ability to lock and unlock taskbar items, so they don't automatically drag them off the screen or whatever... which a
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Yet I'm yet to hear of a coder who brings in almost half a million dollars in salary. Instead I hear of good coders making about $10K or so more than mediocre HTML jockeys and VB h4x0rs. It continually astounds me that the U.S. claims to be a capitalist society but in this one area we act like everyone is equal when they clearly are not.
It is a capitalist society: An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.
A true capitalist society ends up being very close to a plutocracy... money & power go to those with money. What you want is a meritocracy... money & power to go those with talent.
Anyway, people make that much all the time in Silicon Valley and such. They made a lot more before the market crashed and their stock options became useless...
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
My prediction: global warming will become the first issue of science and politics that captures the imagination of large numbers of American voters... They read that skin cancer rates are rising.
Well, the skin cancer rates are due all the CFC's eating the ozone layer, which was a pretty big deal a decade or so ago.
It's a good prelude the global warming battle, but an easier one - the scientific evidence was a lot more definitive, and not nearly as many industries were affected by the required solution ("Ban cfc's, use alternatives.")
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
But here, we're talking about a web app which has already been released under the GPL. Say someone wrote a GPL version of a Passport-like authentication scheme. Under the current GPL licensing options, Evil Propietary Company could take that code and embrace-and-entend it on their own Passport servers without releasing those changes.
I'm sure lots of Open Source web app programmers would like an option to prevent that from happening to their code; to make sure their code is protected by the same "share and share alike" free software spirit that other Open Source code is protected by.
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
I dunno... it's more than just, say, a word document. If you've got web app that, say, does your taxes, or converts your image files, or gives you a fully-functional word processor, the level of interaction is far beyond that of simply "output". If you or your business were dependent on that functionality, you should have the freedom to have the code so you're not dependent on your service provider.
Although I don't think it should be covered by the GPL; there should probably be a special GPL variant (WGPL?) to cover the special circumstances of web apps.
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.