Interface wise Win7 is a lot better than XP in *some* areas, but is seriously beginning to trail behind popular Linux distros. I did a comparison of Win7, Ubuntu, PCLOS, Linux Mint, Kubuntu with 6 everyday tasks and found it wanting a bit.
None of your tasks seem to be day to day events, and therefore worth being worried about when they take an extra click or two...
(To say nothing of the relevance of scoring by number of mouse clicks...)
The "Vista is crap" mentality that still pervades is rather baffling to me.
What's more entertaining is the people who rail on Vista being crap, praise Windows 7 for being "best evar", then turn around and call Windows 7 "Vista SP1".
There's some pretty serious mental gymnastics going on there.:)
Wait, what? I didn't get a manual with Win7 (came bundled with my computer).
Start ->Help.
Windows keyboard shortcuts are an abomination, mostly because they are not defined anywhere, or they aren't very logical. Alt+F4? Huh? What's wrong with something like Alt+Q for quit?
Alt+F4 is a hangover from Windows _3.1_ (more accurately, OS/2). It still works in modern Windows, for legacy reasons, but it's not the "standard".
At least that way a user can GUESS what a shortcut might be. But then you run into the problem of which modifier key? How do I know? How do I get to the underlined O under the File menu to "Open" something. How is CTRL+F + CTRL+O better than a simple and consistent modifier key + O to open a file?
All of this is explained in the help. Or, quite reasonably, assumed knowledge given that it's been consistent for 15+ years now.
At least with OSX it tells you exactly which keys are used for the shortcut right in the menu, and you don't have to do four keystrokes to get to one nested option.
Not all OSX shortcuts are in the menus, and having to do four nested keystrokes to get to an arbitrary menu item is still leagues ahead of not having a keyboard shortcut at all (since OSX's keyboard accessibility is so primitive).
Also, the new Microsoft Office software doesn't even have menus, so looking in the menu for the shortcut key doesn't work anymore either. I have NO idea how to find the shortcuts now.
They're in the tooltips.
In short, pretty much your whole rant can be boiled down to "I have made no attempt to learn or understand the system, and therefore it sucks".
It is ONLY possible to be guilty of libel if the people familiar with the target would reasonably BELIEVE the claims. Since the school board themselves have testified that "nobody took the claims seriously" - it is therefore absolutely NOT libel.
Nobody on the school board, or nobody in the world ? VERY different things.
Your rant is based on the false assumption that teachers consider any input to be "disruption". They don't. What they do consider "disruption" is not paying attention, gossiping, verbal and physical attacks, and irrelevant commentary. These are the kinds of things that - whatever delusions you might have to the contrary - make up "9/10" classroom disruptions.
"Maintaining discipline" in a classroom isn't about squashing anyone who dares be "different". It's about not allowing kids talking with their neighbour, playing flash games on their laptop, or screaming abuse from disrupting everyone else's learning time.
More then a handful of times we have been unable to patch our windows desktops and servers because software we relied on simply would not work after the patch.
Can yuo give some examples of the patches and the software they broke ?
Targeted attacks are so far out of scope of a discussion about typical windows malware it's not even funny.
If I can sell the locked car in a brightly lit garage for enough money, that's the target.
Really ? Even if you can make half as much stealing a dozen other cars with orders of magnitude less risk ?
Yes, many security breech come from users. HOWEVER a properly design system makes that hard to do by it's very design.
How ? What design features are you referring to ?
Monday I got an error trying to mount a hard drive in WIn7. The error said "You must have administrator permission to access these files" Continue?
That right, a hard drive from a different system I didn't have rights to access and win7 just gave me a nice box and then let me continue.
You mean as opposed to doing the same thing on a typical UNIX box where you wouldn't have even been prompted ?
something I've intentionally done many times. I have yet to be compromised.
Really ? You're plugging in a RHEL box dating from 2001, without a firewall, and with a comparable set of default services enabled, and not getting a single hit ?
Windows security is horrid. It's design is poor, it's implementation weak, and you are a fool to use it on wide scale server systems.
Pleasure highlight the "poor design" and "weak implementation" more specifically.
BMI is the worst measure to gauge obesity, there are many factors that need to be considered to determine obesity.
I agree. Even if I got my weight down to where I'd really like to have it (90kg - 30 less than I am now), I'd still be considered "overweight" according to my BMI.
That was kind of my point - the term "obese" gets thrown around way too much.
"errors" have changed throughout history. Chances are in every single post on/. , there is some thing that might have been considered an "error" a few hundred years ago. What was an "error" 50 or 100 years ago might be considered to be proper today.
Except it's not then it's now.
English is an evolving language.
Where's the "evolution" in using a fundamentally _wrong_ word ? Not a simple misspelling. Not a similar-but-technically-incorrect word. Not a pun. A word that has a completely different meaning to the way it's being used ?
But it is still part of the language. One could argue that all written language is a kludge borne of inadequate machinery. Letter writing is a kludge borne out of the lack of telephones, the Latin alphabet is a kludge because they didn't have the IPA back then, etc.
Er, what ? How is letter writing "a kludge borne out of the lack of telephones" ? They're different mediums. That's like saying paintings are a kludge borne out of the lack of TVs.
Such as? If I say "you're correct" it doesn't make any sense to make it be "your correct".
Nor was that the example given.
Are there even any cases where it would -really- matter between your and you're?
Uh, all of them, given they're completely different words ? You may as well ask, are there any cases where it would -really- matter between paws and pause, or haul and hall, or apples and oranges. Or wonder if it really matters whether people put their words in the right grammatical order.
And even then, would it be any different than the multitudes of homophones and such that English already has?
What relevance are homophones to the written word ? How is a homophone useful to someone who is not a native speaker, has never heard the language, does not know the pronunciation guidelines, is deaf, or simply doesn't recognise the word being used ?
But all living languages -have- connotation. If you want a strictly denotative language go to a dead language or 1984-esque NewSpeak.
No. This is not about "connotations". This is about syntax. It's not about trying to decipher some higher-level meaning based upon tone and style, it's about trying to determine whether someone actually knows what the words they're using mean.
The main issue with red light cams is basic due process.
The main issue with red light cameras is that in the USA they're typically accompanied by a shortening of the amber cycle so more people run the light.
So far as I know this doesn't happen in other countries.
Other than this I don't really see a problem. Unlike speeding, there's not really any "safe" way to run a red light.
While they did replace Display Postscript with the more PDF-like Quartz, Apple didn't replace the GUI - they just changed the look and feel from the almost monochrome one of NextStep and OpenStep.
Huh ? What do you think a GUI is if not "look and feel" ?
Because the prompts make more sense? Windows programs are often needing write access they have no business needing to write to. Is that MS's fault? Not directly, but their piss poor track record of development has led most developers to use the program files directory as a writeable location.
The last time Microsoft could be reasonably blamed for this is about 1998.
Linux has had this security model since forever, so developers don't expect to be able to write dynamic data to any system folders.
Even DOS-based Windows has had per-user datastores since about 1997.
In Vista I was prompted every time I wanted to run certain applications. This trains users to simply click "accept" to get what they want done. Not secure. In linux, when I'm prompted I know it's because I need to be aware of something. The prompts are more realistic.
The prompts appear for exactly the same good reasons in Vista. There's nothing the OS can do to prevent applications unreasonably requiring elevated privileges (as in Linux).
the suggestion that stealing 100,000 pennies over the course of a couple years is somehow bragging rights compared to the person who robs a couple banks and gets far more...is silly.
Of course it is, but that's not the comparison. The comparison is someone who steals a little bit from a lot of people to someone who tries and fails to steal a lot from a few people.
The value is not on windows desktops. They're barely worth the hassle. The only reason they're targets isn't because they're so prolific, but because they're so easy.
The point is that they're easy because of the user demographic. Most security breaches happen due to user error, not software flaw or failure.
Again, I'll make the car analogy. If you were going to steal a car, would you target the locked vehicle sitting in a well-lit display room with a 24x7 guard, or would you go for the vehicle left unlocked with the keys in it in a back alley on the outskirts of town ?
This is not the case with UAC because the whole security model specially on the file system level is a mess. You need admin privileges for things that shouldn't need them.
Because we all know that English never evolves right? We all write like how Chaucer wrote.
It's not about "evolution", it's about errors.
Text speak is just a natural evolution of language.
No, it's not. It's a kludge borne of inadequate input devices.
Why does it bother us so much? Do we really -lose- that much?
Absolutely. We lose the ability to interpret the meaning of words we are unfamiliar with, since we are no longer able to deconstruct them to their roots.
But honestly, when we right informally, do we really -lose- anything? If I say "your right" do we really have so much trouble mentally translating it to "you're right"?
Yes. "Your" is a posessive, while "you're" is a contraction of "You are". They mean completely and fundamentally different things. The statement is equally valid with either spelling - but it could mean completely different things.
Sure, I can probably guess what you meant, rather than what you said, but that simply highlights how poorly you're communicating - you're shifting the responsibility on to me to interpret what you mean (and therefore, the blame if I am incorrect), rather than just writing in a clean and unambiguous fashion.
Finally, consider the situation from the perspective of someone (or something - eg: machine translators) who isn't fluent in the language. With no ability to accurately deconstruct the word, and no ability to fall back onto some sort of phonetic interpretation, how are they supposed to glean understanding ?
Despite the comments I made in my previous posts, I should make it clear that I'm not averse to other media that give us cromulent new words that embiggen a language whose richness comes from the fact that it is fun. Shakespeare did it, so why not the Simpsons?
The issue isn't inventing new words, or modernising spelling, it's about fundamentally changing what existing words mean.
But they -are- reading when they are online. And writing too. They just aren't reading books. I can guarantee you that kids today read -far- more then the ones raised on TV in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and they probably write a ton more too. Think about it, I'm sure you read about the same if not more now than you did back when you were a kid. Between text messaging, Facebook, blogs, Wikipedia, etc. we are all reading more than we probably ever had to as a child.
Yes, but most of that is going to actively harm their spelling vastly more than it helps - and that's assuming the reading and writing in blogs, etc, is using real words rather than txtspk.
Heck, I've gotten to the point these days that seeing 'your' and 'you're' used _correctly_ in any sort of non-formal writing often makes me do a double take (and such errors are starting to be seen in formal communications like news articles, company memos and resumes).
If you're already obese (and many kids are), sports like football, soccer or baseball are not really recommended.
"Obese" is a very loosely used word these days. I'm "obese" (BMI ~33), yet cover ~110 miles/week on my bike and play soccer reasonably frequently without any ill effects (indeed, I'd like to be doing more, but don't have the time).
The fact is that modern networked equipment, from routers to printers to VoIP gateways, to gaming consoles, to cable modems, to smart phones, etc. run an OS with a network stack.
And most importantly UNlike Windows they can - and frequently are - designed in such a way that they only run a very small subset of trusted, verifiable, code.
It's not hard to make a system secure when it doesn't do much, and especially when it doesn't have to be capable of doing arbitrary things.
It's basically impossible to secure an unmanaged, general purpose computer where an ignorant end user has ultimate control over what runs on it.
The permission system they use has gotten a lot better over the years, but it's absolutely inexcusable that Windows XP was allowed to ship without a proper security model.
Windows XP absolutely had a "security model", just like every version of Windows NT before and after it.
You don't know what you're talking about (or you're misusing terminology to the point of uselessness).
how the hell is anyone supposed to know whether it's trying to update a configuration file that the dumb developer stuck in the program files directory, or install spyware into IE?
How are they supposed to know if a sudo prompt in Linux or OSX is legitimate ?
Security is NOT about patching holes, a system must be designed from the ground up to be secure. Doze and it's predecessors were NEVER designed this way.
Which part of Windows NT was not designed from the ground up to be secure ?
Slashdot Mirror
Interface wise Win7 is a lot better than XP in *some* areas, but is seriously beginning to trail behind popular Linux distros. I did a comparison of Win7, Ubuntu, PCLOS, Linux Mint, Kubuntu with 6 everyday tasks and found it wanting a bit.
None of your tasks seem to be day to day events, and therefore worth being worried about when they take an extra click or two...
(To say nothing of the relevance of scoring by number of mouse clicks...)
Only a couple of years ago /. would never allow anything with "Windows" in the article title on a front page. Either times have changed, or /.
Say what ? Slashdot has fairly consistently had at least one "Windows sucks" article a week for over a decade now.
The "Vista is crap" mentality that still pervades is rather baffling to me.
What's more entertaining is the people who rail on Vista being crap, praise Windows 7 for being "best evar", then turn around and call Windows 7 "Vista SP1".
There's some pretty serious mental gymnastics going on there. :)
Wait, what? I didn't get a manual with Win7 (came bundled with my computer).
Start ->Help.
Windows keyboard shortcuts are an abomination, mostly because they are not defined anywhere, or they aren't very logical. Alt+F4? Huh? What's wrong with something like Alt+Q for quit?
Alt+F4 is a hangover from Windows _3.1_ (more accurately, OS/2). It still works in modern Windows, for legacy reasons, but it's not the "standard".
At least that way a user can GUESS what a shortcut might be. But then you run into the problem of which modifier key? How do I know? How do I get to the underlined O under the File menu to "Open" something. How is CTRL+F + CTRL+O better than a simple and consistent modifier key + O to open a file?
All of this is explained in the help. Or, quite reasonably, assumed knowledge given that it's been consistent for 15+ years now.
At least with OSX it tells you exactly which keys are used for the shortcut right in the menu, and you don't have to do four keystrokes to get to one nested option.
Not all OSX shortcuts are in the menus, and having to do four nested keystrokes to get to an arbitrary menu item is still leagues ahead of not having a keyboard shortcut at all (since OSX's keyboard accessibility is so primitive).
Also, the new Microsoft Office software doesn't even have menus, so looking in the menu for the shortcut key doesn't work anymore either. I have NO idea how to find the shortcuts now.
They're in the tooltips.
In short, pretty much your whole rant can be boiled down to "I have made no attempt to learn or understand the system, and therefore it sucks".
It is ONLY possible to be guilty of libel if the people familiar with the target would reasonably BELIEVE the claims. Since the school board themselves have testified that "nobody took the claims seriously" - it is therefore absolutely NOT libel.
Nobody on the school board, or nobody in the world ? VERY different things.
Your rant is based on the false assumption that teachers consider any input to be "disruption". They don't. What they do consider "disruption" is not paying attention, gossiping, verbal and physical attacks, and irrelevant commentary. These are the kinds of things that - whatever delusions you might have to the contrary - make up "9/10" classroom disruptions.
"Maintaining discipline" in a classroom isn't about squashing anyone who dares be "different". It's about not allowing kids talking with their neighbour, playing flash games on their laptop, or screaming abuse from disrupting everyone else's learning time.
More then a handful of times we have been unable to patch our windows desktops and servers because software we relied on simply would not work after the patch.
Can yuo give some examples of the patches and the software they broke ?
That's no more a "vulnerability" than an SUID binary. Turn the UAC level back one from the default and it isn't even possible.
Industrial espionage.
That's why.
Targeted attacks are so far out of scope of a discussion about typical windows malware it's not even funny.
If I can sell the locked car in a brightly lit garage for enough money, that's the target.
Really ? Even if you can make half as much stealing a dozen other cars with orders of magnitude less risk ?
Yes, many security breech come from users. HOWEVER a properly design system makes that hard to do by it's very design.
How ? What design features are you referring to ?
Monday I got an error trying to mount a hard drive in WIn7. The error said "You must have administrator permission to access these files" Continue?
That right, a hard drive from a different system I didn't have rights to access and win7 just gave me a nice box and then let me continue.
You mean as opposed to doing the same thing on a typical UNIX box where you wouldn't have even been prompted ?
something I've intentionally done many times. I have yet to be compromised.
Really ? You're plugging in a RHEL box dating from 2001, without a firewall, and with a comparable set of default services enabled, and not getting a single hit ?
Windows security is horrid. It's design is poor, it's implementation weak, and you are a fool to use it on wide scale server systems.
Pleasure highlight the "poor design" and "weak implementation" more specifically.
BMI is the worst measure to gauge obesity, there are many factors that need to be considered to determine obesity.
I agree. Even if I got my weight down to where I'd really like to have it (90kg - 30 less than I am now), I'd still be considered "overweight" according to my BMI.
That was kind of my point - the term "obese" gets thrown around way too much.
"errors" have changed throughout history. Chances are in every single post on /. , there is some thing that might have been considered an "error" a few hundred years ago. What was an "error" 50 or 100 years ago might be considered to be proper today.
Except it's not then it's now.
English is an evolving language.
Where's the "evolution" in using a fundamentally _wrong_ word ? Not a simple misspelling. Not a similar-but-technically-incorrect word. Not a pun. A word that has a completely different meaning to the way it's being used ?
But it is still part of the language. One could argue that all written language is a kludge borne of inadequate machinery. Letter writing is a kludge borne out of the lack of telephones, the Latin alphabet is a kludge because they didn't have the IPA back then, etc.
Er, what ? How is letter writing "a kludge borne out of the lack of telephones" ? They're different mediums. That's like saying paintings are a kludge borne out of the lack of TVs.
Such as? If I say "you're correct" it doesn't make any sense to make it be "your correct".
Nor was that the example given.
Are there even any cases where it would -really- matter between your and you're?
Uh, all of them, given they're completely different words ? You may as well ask, are there any cases where it would -really- matter between paws and pause, or haul and hall, or apples and oranges. Or wonder if it really matters whether people put their words in the right grammatical order.
And even then, would it be any different than the multitudes of homophones and such that English already has?
What relevance are homophones to the written word ? How is a homophone useful to someone who is not a native speaker, has never heard the language, does not know the pronunciation guidelines, is deaf, or simply doesn't recognise the word being used ?
But all living languages -have- connotation. If you want a strictly denotative language go to a dead language or 1984-esque NewSpeak.
No. This is not about "connotations". This is about syntax. It's not about trying to decipher some higher-level meaning based upon tone and style, it's about trying to determine whether someone actually knows what the words they're using mean.
The main issue with red light cams is basic due process.
The main issue with red light cameras is that in the USA they're typically accompanied by a shortening of the amber cycle so more people run the light.
So far as I know this doesn't happen in other countries.
Other than this I don't really see a problem. Unlike speeding, there's not really any "safe" way to run a red light.
While they did replace Display Postscript with the more PDF-like Quartz, Apple didn't replace the GUI - they just changed the look and feel from the almost monochrome one of NextStep and OpenStep.
Huh ? What do you think a GUI is if not "look and feel" ?
Because the prompts make more sense? Windows programs are often needing write access they have no business needing to write to. Is that MS's fault? Not directly, but their piss poor track record of development has led most developers to use the program files directory as a writeable location.
The last time Microsoft could be reasonably blamed for this is about 1998.
Linux has had this security model since forever, so developers don't expect to be able to write dynamic data to any system folders.
Even DOS-based Windows has had per-user datastores since about 1997.
In Vista I was prompted every time I wanted to run certain applications. This trains users to simply click "accept" to get what they want done. Not secure. In linux, when I'm prompted I know it's because I need to be aware of something. The prompts are more realistic.
The prompts appear for exactly the same good reasons in Vista. There's nothing the OS can do to prevent applications unreasonably requiring elevated privileges (as in Linux).
the suggestion that stealing 100,000 pennies over the course of a couple years is somehow bragging rights compared to the person who robs a couple banks and gets far more...is silly.
Of course it is, but that's not the comparison. The comparison is someone who steals a little bit from a lot of people to someone who tries and fails to steal a lot from a few people.
The value is not on windows desktops. They're barely worth the hassle. The only reason they're targets isn't because they're so prolific, but because they're so easy.
The point is that they're easy because of the user demographic. Most security breaches happen due to user error, not software flaw or failure.
Again, I'll make the car analogy. If you were going to steal a car, would you target the locked vehicle sitting in a well-lit display room with a 24x7 guard, or would you go for the vehicle left unlocked with the keys in it in a back alley on the outskirts of town ?
This is not the case with UAC because the whole security model specially on the file system level is a mess. You need admin privileges for things that shouldn't need them.
For example ?
Because we all know that English never evolves right? We all write like how Chaucer wrote.
It's not about "evolution", it's about errors.
Text speak is just a natural evolution of language.
No, it's not. It's a kludge borne of inadequate input devices.
Why does it bother us so much? Do we really -lose- that much?
Absolutely. We lose the ability to interpret the meaning of words we are unfamiliar with, since we are no longer able to deconstruct them to their roots.
But honestly, when we right informally, do we really -lose- anything? If I say "your right" do we really have so much trouble mentally translating it to "you're right"?
Yes. "Your" is a posessive, while "you're" is a contraction of "You are". They mean completely and fundamentally different things. The statement is equally valid with either spelling - but it could mean completely different things.
Sure, I can probably guess what you meant, rather than what you said, but that simply highlights how poorly you're communicating - you're shifting the responsibility on to me to interpret what you mean (and therefore, the blame if I am incorrect), rather than just writing in a clean and unambiguous fashion.
Finally, consider the situation from the perspective of someone (or something - eg: machine translators) who isn't fluent in the language. With no ability to accurately deconstruct the word, and no ability to fall back onto some sort of phonetic interpretation, how are they supposed to glean understanding ?
Despite the comments I made in my previous posts, I should make it clear that I'm not averse to other media that give us cromulent new words that embiggen a language whose richness comes from the fact that it is fun. Shakespeare did it, so why not the Simpsons?
The issue isn't inventing new words, or modernising spelling, it's about fundamentally changing what existing words mean.
But they -are- reading when they are online. And writing too. They just aren't reading books. I can guarantee you that kids today read -far- more then the ones raised on TV in the 70s, 80s and early 90s and they probably write a ton more too. Think about it, I'm sure you read about the same if not more now than you did back when you were a kid. Between text messaging, Facebook, blogs, Wikipedia, etc. we are all reading more than we probably ever had to as a child.
Yes, but most of that is going to actively harm their spelling vastly more than it helps - and that's assuming the reading and writing in blogs, etc, is using real words rather than txtspk.
Heck, I've gotten to the point these days that seeing 'your' and 'you're' used _correctly_ in any sort of non-formal writing often makes me do a double take (and such errors are starting to be seen in formal communications like news articles, company memos and resumes).
If you're already obese (and many kids are), sports like football, soccer or baseball are not really recommended.
"Obese" is a very loosely used word these days. I'm "obese" (BMI ~33), yet cover ~110 miles/week on my bike and play soccer reasonably frequently without any ill effects (indeed, I'd like to be doing more, but don't have the time).
Seems like a happy medium would be for the government to pay for healthcare, but for private hospitals and doctors to provide it?
GP is either ignorant or lying. There's nothing preventing you from getting private medical care in the UK if you're prepared to pay for it.
The fact is that modern networked equipment, from routers to printers to VoIP gateways, to gaming consoles, to cable modems, to smart phones, etc. run an OS with a network stack.
And most importantly UNlike Windows they can - and frequently are - designed in such a way that they only run a very small subset of trusted, verifiable, code.
It's not hard to make a system secure when it doesn't do much, and especially when it doesn't have to be capable of doing arbitrary things.
It's basically impossible to secure an unmanaged, general purpose computer where an ignorant end user has ultimate control over what runs on it.
The permission system they use has gotten a lot better over the years, but it's absolutely inexcusable that Windows XP was allowed to ship without a proper security model.
Windows XP absolutely had a "security model", just like every version of Windows NT before and after it.
You don't know what you're talking about (or you're misusing terminology to the point of uselessness).
how the hell is anyone supposed to know whether it's trying to update a configuration file that the dumb developer stuck in the program files directory, or install spyware into IE?
How are they supposed to know if a sudo prompt in Linux or OSX is legitimate ?
Security is NOT about patching holes, a system must be designed from the ground up to be secure. Doze and it's predecessors were NEVER designed this way.
Which part of Windows NT was not designed from the ground up to be secure ?