How come every other IE exploit crashes Windows, or circumvents permissions, or nukes something requiring a reboot?
Because most people run as Administrator. Take that out of the equation and 99% of those exploits don't even work, let alone cause the sorts of problems you're talking about.
It if really were a pure user-level process with no hooks deep into the system this wouldn't happen.
Yes it would, if that app is running with elevated privileges. Remember, if processes can fix problems without "hooks into the kernel" they can also *make* problems without "hooks into the kernel".
I have _never_ managed to crash the LINUX kernel with a bad app.
Try this as root:
cat/dev/zero >/dev/mem
If only MS did this in-house. They would get so sick of does-not-work-as-non-admin problems they might actually fix them (or get the vendors to do so).
Like most of the "problems" people have with Windows, poorly written applications that need Admin access are neither Microsoft's fault nor responsibility, nor anything they can reasonably influence. The necessary software infrastructure for writing multiuser-friendly applications has been available since *1993* in Windows NT and in "mainstream" Windows 9x since about *1996*. When apps only work as Administrator, that is the software developer's fault and no-one else's.
So can you remove IE completely from yourt system? It's not a framework, after all, it's an application.
No, it's a framework. IE (on Windows) hasn't been a wholly standalone application since about 1996.
You should be able to delete it or uninstall it, just as you can with any other application.
You can trivially delete just the IE browser application. Of course,that doesn't delete the whole thing.
Unless it's not an application, but a system function. Which is completely different from Safari, and not a good analogy.
That's true, but the IE analogue on OS X isn't just Safari, it's Safari+WebCore.
When I finally get my AMD64 system working this weekend, I'll try removing it from the fresh Win64 install and see how that goes.
You shouldn't have any trouble deleting just the WMP application (equivalent to Quicktime player on OS X) - but I imagine if you try and rip out the entire thing (similar to Quicktime on OS X) you'll start breaking stuff.
Of course, the problem with Microsoft was slightly different. If a PC manufacturer wanted to install a different browser on their desktop, Microsoft refused to allow it unless they agreed to increase the price of Windows.
More accurately, suppliers who didn't install alternative browsers were given a discount. My understanding is that such dels are pretty commonplace in business (try getting a Pepsi at McDonald's, or a Coke at KFC).
Note also that this is a *completely separate issue* to the "browser integration".
As they currently hold 3-5 percent of the market (depending on who you listen to) they can't be considered in any manner to be using monopolistic power illegally.
Actually, if we were to divide the market along the same lines the anti-trust trial did (where Apple weren't even considered part of the same market as Windows) then Apple would have something around a 99% market share and would almost certainly be guilty of anti-trust violations. The main difference is Apple's behaviour affects so few people that no-one is prepared the carry the torch (lest you get the wrong idea, what I'm about to say applies just as much to Apple's "monopoly").
Personally I'm of the opinion that Microsoft never had a monopoly in the first place, unless you rely on an unreasonable market definition (as the Microsoft anti-trust case did). If you expand the market definition out to include real-life Windows competitors/alternatives (like, say, MacOS) there has _always_ been at least one drop-in functional replacement for Windows for the vast bulk of consumers.
And you're right - it's trivial to install FireFox or Opera or whatever you like. The issue is not that it's hard, it's that almost no-one does this because most people are not power-users. They use the apps that came with the machine, and not much else.
And if those applications are meeting their needs/wants, what's the issue ?
If we accept that as true, and accept that the computing world is massively dominated by Microsoft, then the conclusion must be that web developers are targeting that platform because it's the most common one.
One wonders if you would be so distressed if it was anyone but Microsoft holding 90% of the market...
Unfortunately the IE platform has been largely stuck in the same place for some time, while other browsers have moved on to better support of emerging 'standards'.
Clearly demand for those "standards" is relatively low if neither the supply (websites) nor demand (web browsers) side of the equation is pushing them. Could it be they're unpopular because no-one outside of a tiny cadre of web-development geeks think they're worth it ?
The depth to which IE has been integrated into the kernel is unnecessary though (from an engineering perspective, it's vital when you're trying to win an antitrust case).
IE is not in any way, shape, or form "integrated" into the "kernel". It's a user space application and a bunch of shared components, just like KDE's Konquerer+khtml or OS X's Safari+WebCore.
This is why all the bitching from all corners about how IE was "bad engineering" is so laughable - if it was so bad, why has "everyone" since then been busily doing exactly the same thing ? SUrely if it was so bad, then the GNOME, KDE and OS X developers would have steered well clear of anything similar ?
How much do you spend in time and money on spyware detectors, antivirus programs, patches, configuration hardening and cleanup?
No more than I do on any other platform - but then I rarely use IE, have been running as a non-Administrator user for nearly 10 years now and enforce the same restrictions on all the machines I manage.
You're wrong about not being able to pull the applications for QuickTime or iTunes from OS X.
No, I'm not, because "Quicktime" is more than just Quicktime player. Certainly, you can delete the Quicktime player - you can delete the media player application easily as well. But doing so on either platform doesn't remove the entire package.
You can easily delete them, and once you do that, they're gone for good. You can install a competing product if you like.
As you can on Windows. With about the same amount of effort, as well.
You seem to keep making this same mistake in posts. QuickTime the application is not QuickTime the framework.
It's not me making the mistake, it's all the people who think IE is just another application who are making the mistake. IE is a browser application *and* a bunch of shared components. Much like Quicktime, you can trivially delete the application, but you can't delete the guts of it without breaking lots of things.
I believe that the real issue with IE is partly that it's impossible to truly remove [...]
IE is as "removable" as Quicktime, or Safari+WebCore, or KDE's khtml, or any other of a myriad combinations of application+shared components.
[...]but mostly the tactics that Microsoft used to make sure that no competing product was installed on PCs in the factory.
Funny how most people only seem to mention about how IE is "unremovable".
Personally I do think restricting other software that could be installed was wrong - but that is a completely separate issue to the technical aspects of what IE is.
Wether or not young people drink more than older people or even are more likely to drink drive it doesn't prove that lower BAC limits work for them.
However, the success of drink-driving laws (enacted on the basis of previously mentioned data & reasoning) _does_. Just like the benefits of limiting learner and provisional motorcyclists to less powerful machines and making safety courses compulsory (now if only they'd do the same for cars), the results speak for themselves.
If young people are as ready to drink drive and do it dangerously as you say they are then wether the limit is 0.00 or 0.05 they'll drink drive.
Some will, certainly. However, most will weigh up driving vs loss of license for 6 - 12 months and decide driving isn't worth it.
The law isn't trying to stop people who drink a carton and then drive - nothing will stop them. The law is trying to prevent people who only have a few drinks and think they've had no effect - or that they can drive safely despite the effect they know it has had - from driving.
You can imagine what you like but the law is quite clear.
The law is never clear - that's why we have courts, judges and juries. There's a great deal of prior judgements that say "zero" != 0.00.
All I have to do on an OS.X boxen to get rid of Safari is to move the app to the trash can.
And all you have to do to match that on Windows is delete the iexplore.exe file.
Of course, IE is more than just that little file - just as on OS X the IE equivalent is Safari *and* the WebCore libraries that you most certainly can't just "drag to the trash".
Internet Exporer for Windows is wired into the OS in such a way as to make it very hard to remove.
Yes, it's a shared library that other parts of the OS depend on. Just like, say, WebCore and Quicktime are in OS X.
You do have a point in that Apple provides programs like iDVD, iMovie and iPhoto but at least none of them is hard wired into the OS.
Apple's equivalents of IE and WMP are just as "hardwired into the OS". Try deleting everything on your system with "quicktime" in the name one day and see how well it functions.
When you set up your distro, you are given a choice of what to install (KDE, Gnome, etc.). When you install WinXP, you are required to install IE 6, WMP 9, etc. This requirement shuts out 3rd-party vendors while keeping MS market share. That is what is illegal -- using one's monopoly in one area to increase market share in another.
Ah, but there lies the difference. In Mac OSX (regular OSX users can correct me on this) and in Linux (or BSD) distributions the bundling is of seperate apps which may or may not depend on parts of the OS and can be seperated from the OS as a whole.
This is incorrect. If you rip Quicktime or WebCore out of OS X, you'll break it. If you rip khtml out of KDE, you'll break it. Etc, etc.
For Linux and *BSD, you don't HAVE to use Firefox if you use a certain Window Manager, in OSX you don't HAVE to use Safari if you don't wish to (and I think you can choose not to install it or at least get rid of it). In WinXP, you HAVE to keep IE on the system for functionality.
You are comparing apples and oranges ("have to use Safari" vs "have to keep IE on the system"). You don't *have* to use IE for anything except Windows Update, if you don't want to (and how is that any different from having to use OS X's included "Software Updater" ?). Personally, I haven't fired up IE to browse the web for over a year now.
You can delete Safari from OS X by dumping it in the trash. Similarly, you can delete the IE web browser front end by deleting iexplore.exe. Neither of these actions deletes the entire package - WebCore remains on OS X and the IE engine remains in Windows.
In the *nix's and OSX you don't HAVE to use or even keep the media players provided to you but you HAVE to keep WMP (insert version here) in order to keep functionality.
No you don't. You can delete the WMP.exe if you want. Of course that doesn't delete the guts of WMP, but then deleting the Quicktime player out of OS X doesn't delete the guts of Quicktime either.
And still, no-one has managed to explain why having a piece of software installed by default stops people using the alternatives.
Have you noticed that the state-of-the-art as far as web pages and web applications are concerned has basically not changed for the last 5 years?
Have you frequented any other website except/. for the last five years ?
Have you ever wondered why all of a sudden the advancement of this field ground to a complete halt?
Maybe because - as in all fields - once a minimum level of acceptable functionality is reached, advancement slows dramatically ?
Oh yes, wasn't it just about the time that MS dominated the web browser market by using their OS monopoly to fund development, made IE impossible to uninstall, and incorporated code in the OS to specifically break competitors software.
Break which software ?
I'm also at something of a loss as to why not being able to uninstall IE is related to slowing browser development. It's not like using another web browser has ever been difficult.
The Apple and Linux bundled software are not irremovable.
If you pull the OS X or Linux+KDE/Linux+GNOME equivalents to IE and WMP out of them, you break them just as efficiently as pulling them out of Windows does.
And because the tight OS intergration MS is able to make thier browser and media player appear to be better products.
How ?
Then when people try out other systems products (Firefox, Quicktime, whatever) on their Windows machine, they appear inferior to IE/WMP because they do not have the OS advantage.
My dad's IT consultant/tech spent about 8 hours waxing and reinstalling windows server 2003, the insane amount of time mainly due to the fact that customization of installation options is virtually nonexistent.
What are these "customisation of installation options" he wanted to do ?
What I would like to buy is a not-so-mini-mac that gave me 2+ memory slots, a 3.5 inch hard drive and a dvd writer that wasn't 2002 technology and screws to hold it together.
You want exactly the same thing I want - and have been asking for since the iMac was first released - a headless iMac.
It's what the Mac Mini *should* have been - although, if they were to release one today, they could call it...PowerMac Mini !
If you're binge drinking then by definition you're going to be over the limit whatever its set at.
Undoubtedly, but the point I'm trying to get across here is that young people - typically - do not drink responsibly. This is merely an extension of their overall poor ability at assessing risk and - directly relevant to this conversation - is exhibited in their over-representation in road death statistics.
Or, to put it more bluntly, young people are vastly more likely to get pissed and do something stupid.
Of course more young people do this because young people go out and socialise more in pubs and clubs.
No, more young people do this because typically young people do not drink sensibly.
"Old people" go out and drink alcohol at least as frequently as "young people" do. The difference is they have a few glasses of wine at a restaurant, not half a dozen jugs of beer in a pub full of similarly ego-challenged peers.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they are more likely to drink drive and it doesn't mean that they need different drink driving rules to older people.
Statistics, psychology and (mounds of) anecdotal evidence disagree with you. Young people *are* more likely to drink - and drink excessively - then drive. Young people *are* more likely to do this regularly. Young people *are* more likely to drive recklessly when drunk (instead of just making their way home slowly via the back streets). This is just another manifestation of their poor risk assessment abilities.
There are many psychologists who have argued that young people - *particularly* males - shouldn't be allowed to drive unsupervised at all until they're well into their 20s (personally I wouldn't go that far).
Most importantly, the positive impact on the road toll demographics that targeted drink-driving laws have wrought demonstrate they *do* need different drink driving rules to older people.
Young people are (generally) not as good drivers as older people (to a point). This is not really due to a lack of technical skills, but due to their general attitude and lack of experience. Good, responsible driving is about 80% attitude and about 20% physical skill. Take away that physical skill capability and debilitate the attitude (as alcohol does - quickly and insidiously) and the comparison gets even worse.
That's no simpler than the 0.05 system. Asking yourself 'if I had a beer an hour ago when will I be at zero again?' is the same as 'if I had a beer an hour ago how near to 0.05 am I'.
I think you're missing my point. "If you drink, you don't drive" means exactly that - if you have a drink at dinner, you get a taxi (or a lift) home - or you just don't drink. The objective is to avoid requiring people to keep track of how much they've had to drink at all.
However, I'd settle for the 0.05 (or even a 0.08) limit if a legally-binding personal breathalyser was available - both to individuals and (by law) at every licensed establishment.
I'll say it again - the NSW govt. reduced the limit for p-platers from 0.02 to 0.00. 0.00 is no more 0.02 than 0.07 is 0.05.
I'd be interested to hear if this has been contested in court yet - because while the NSW state government is notoriously draconian with their road rules (although still aspiring to the lengths the Victorian gov't is prepared to go to) I can't imagine that would stand up against a legal challenge (assuming the P plater who got picked up with a 0.01 BAC really hadn't had anything to drink).
a lot better than the pitiful 32mb ati 9600 in the mini.
It's not even that good. The Mini has a Radeon *9200*. The same video card that was in my PC laptop 3 years ago.
More importantly, the Mini's video card is incapable of accelerating the fancy new graphical effects in Tiger[0] (something they _must_ have known when designing it) - and people whinge about Microsoft's "planned obselesence"...
[0] This was the second reason I won't buy a Mini. The first was it not being a G5. Ho hum, still waiting for a headless iMac...
I doubt most adults can do this either, that's why we have a set limit - 0.05.
Statistics say otherwise. The percentage of young binge drinkers is a lot higher than percentage of old binge drinkers.
There's no medical reason why being older than a p-plater would make your driving less affected by alcohol.
Actually there is - tolerance build-up over time.
Added to that are the more important psychological reasons I mentioned earlier. Young people - particularly drunk young people - are very poor at risk assessment.
The problem is not so much that younger people's driving is more affected by alcohol, it's that younger people are more likely to drive drunk, more likely to drive recklessly and far less likely to have significant driving experience to get them out of trouble if/when they get into it.
Besides, I don't think this'd have significant impact because the problem is one of enforcement of the existing rules - if people don't obey 0.05 they sure as hell won't obey zero.
OTOH, it would streamline the whole procedure a lot more - if you measure at all, you're busted.
Anyway we shouldn't have to give up our priveleges just to get a few rich people for harsher drink drive penalties.
That's not my reason. My reason is to make the system fair and remove any possibility of confusion on behalf of those wondering whether or not they're right to drive. If you drink, you don't drive - simple.
In NSW it *used* to be 0.02 for p-platers before they dropped it to zero. IANAL but I doubt they'd drop it to zero and then say 'oh well its actually zero up to 0.02 that's OK, even though we just changed it from 0.02'. This is probably different in QLD.
As I said, I'm pretty sure you'll find the legal definition of "zero" is 0.02 - it just get marketed as zero so people don't think they can get away with, say, a single light beer (which would probably only put you at 0.02 anyway).
It can't be absolutely zero because there are many things that can quite innocently get alcohol into the bloodstream (some medicines, for example) and in particular things that can fool breathalysers (some breath mints, certain types of saliva, etc).
So, all those infractions on my civil liberties, and they still haven't solved the problem.
However, they*have _significantly_ reduced it.
Although I have to wonder which of your "civil liberties" are being "infringed" by not being allowed to maneuver 1500kg+ of metal around in public while drunk.
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Because most people run as Administrator. Take that out of the equation and 99% of those exploits don't even work, let alone cause the sorts of problems you're talking about.
It if really were a pure user-level process with no hooks deep into the system this wouldn't happen.
Yes it would, if that app is running with elevated privileges. Remember, if processes can fix problems without "hooks into the kernel" they can also *make* problems without "hooks into the kernel".
I have _never_ managed to crash the LINUX kernel with a bad app.
Try this as root:
If only MS did this in-house. They would get so sick of does-not-work-as-non-admin problems they might actually fix them (or get the vendors to do so).
Like most of the "problems" people have with Windows, poorly written applications that need Admin access are neither Microsoft's fault nor responsibility, nor anything they can reasonably influence. The necessary software infrastructure for writing multiuser-friendly applications has been available since *1993* in Windows NT and in "mainstream" Windows 9x since about *1996*. When apps only work as Administrator, that is the software developer's fault and no-one else's.
Try something like "cd prog*" if you want a quicker way.
So is Windows with NTFS and FAT32 (and has been since NT 3.1 and Windows 95).
No, it's a framework. IE (on Windows) hasn't been a wholly standalone application since about 1996.
You should be able to delete it or uninstall it, just as you can with any other application.
You can trivially delete just the IE browser application. Of course,that doesn't delete the whole thing.
Unless it's not an application, but a system function. Which is completely different from Safari, and not a good analogy.
That's true, but the IE analogue on OS X isn't just Safari, it's Safari+WebCore.
When I finally get my AMD64 system working this weekend, I'll try removing it from the fresh Win64 install and see how that goes.
You shouldn't have any trouble deleting just the WMP application (equivalent to Quicktime player on OS X) - but I imagine if you try and rip out the entire thing (similar to Quicktime on OS X) you'll start breaking stuff.
Of course, the problem with Microsoft was slightly different. If a PC manufacturer wanted to install a different browser on their desktop, Microsoft refused to allow it unless they agreed to increase the price of Windows.
More accurately, suppliers who didn't install alternative browsers were given a discount. My understanding is that such dels are pretty commonplace in business (try getting a Pepsi at McDonald's, or a Coke at KFC).
Note also that this is a *completely separate issue* to the "browser integration".
As they currently hold 3-5 percent of the market (depending on who you listen to) they can't be considered in any manner to be using monopolistic power illegally.
Actually, if we were to divide the market along the same lines the anti-trust trial did (where Apple weren't even considered part of the same market as Windows) then Apple would have something around a 99% market share and would almost certainly be guilty of anti-trust violations. The main difference is Apple's behaviour affects so few people that no-one is prepared the carry the torch (lest you get the wrong idea, what I'm about to say applies just as much to Apple's "monopoly").
Personally I'm of the opinion that Microsoft never had a monopoly in the first place, unless you rely on an unreasonable market definition (as the Microsoft anti-trust case did). If you expand the market definition out to include real-life Windows competitors/alternatives (like, say, MacOS) there has _always_ been at least one drop-in functional replacement for Windows for the vast bulk of consumers.
And if those applications are meeting their needs/wants, what's the issue ?
If we accept that as true, and accept that the computing world is massively dominated by Microsoft, then the conclusion must be that web developers are targeting that platform because it's the most common one.
One wonders if you would be so distressed if it was anyone but Microsoft holding 90% of the market...
Unfortunately the IE platform has been largely stuck in the same place for some time, while other browsers have moved on to better support of emerging 'standards'.
Clearly demand for those "standards" is relatively low if neither the supply (websites) nor demand (web browsers) side of the equation is pushing them. Could it be they're unpopular because no-one outside of a tiny cadre of web-development geeks think they're worth it ?
IE is not in any way, shape, or form "integrated" into the "kernel". It's a user space application and a bunch of shared components, just like KDE's Konquerer+khtml or OS X's Safari+WebCore.
This is why all the bitching from all corners about how IE was "bad engineering" is so laughable - if it was so bad, why has "everyone" since then been busily doing exactly the same thing ? SUrely if it was so bad, then the GNOME, KDE and OS X developers would have steered well clear of anything similar ?
How much do you spend in time and money on spyware detectors, antivirus programs, patches, configuration hardening and cleanup?
No more than I do on any other platform - but then I rarely use IE, have been running as a non-Administrator user for nearly 10 years now and enforce the same restrictions on all the machines I manage.
No, I'm not, because "Quicktime" is more than just Quicktime player. Certainly, you can delete the Quicktime player - you can delete the media player application easily as well. But doing so on either platform doesn't remove the entire package.
You can easily delete them, and once you do that, they're gone for good. You can install a competing product if you like.
As you can on Windows. With about the same amount of effort, as well.
You seem to keep making this same mistake in posts. QuickTime the application is not QuickTime the framework.
It's not me making the mistake, it's all the people who think IE is just another application who are making the mistake. IE is a browser application *and* a bunch of shared components. Much like Quicktime, you can trivially delete the application, but you can't delete the guts of it without breaking lots of things.
I believe that the real issue with IE is partly that it's impossible to truly remove [...]
IE is as "removable" as Quicktime, or Safari+WebCore, or KDE's khtml, or any other of a myriad combinations of application+shared components.
[...]but mostly the tactics that Microsoft used to make sure that no competing product was installed on PCs in the factory.
Funny how most people only seem to mention about how IE is "unremovable".
Personally I do think restricting other software that could be installed was wrong - but that is a completely separate issue to the technical aspects of what IE is.
The funny thing is, if you were to apply a similar market definition to Apple and then examine their behaviour, the case would be just as solid.
However, the success of drink-driving laws (enacted on the basis of previously mentioned data & reasoning) _does_. Just like the benefits of limiting learner and provisional motorcyclists to less powerful machines and making safety courses compulsory (now if only they'd do the same for cars), the results speak for themselves.
If young people are as ready to drink drive and do it dangerously as you say they are then wether the limit is 0.00 or 0.05 they'll drink drive.
Some will, certainly. However, most will weigh up driving vs loss of license for 6 - 12 months and decide driving isn't worth it.
The law isn't trying to stop people who drink a carton and then drive - nothing will stop them. The law is trying to prevent people who only have a few drinks and think they've had no effect - or that they can drive safely despite the effect they know it has had - from driving.
You can imagine what you like but the law is quite clear.
The law is never clear - that's why we have courts, judges and juries. There's a great deal of prior judgements that say "zero" != 0.00.
And all you have to do to match that on Windows is delete the iexplore.exe file.
Of course, IE is more than just that little file - just as on OS X the IE equivalent is Safari *and* the WebCore libraries that you most certainly can't just "drag to the trash".
Internet Exporer for Windows is wired into the OS in such a way as to make it very hard to remove.
Yes, it's a shared library that other parts of the OS depend on. Just like, say, WebCore and Quicktime are in OS X.
You do have a point in that Apple provides programs like iDVD, iMovie and iPhoto but at least none of them is hard wired into the OS.
Apple's equivalents of IE and WMP are just as "hardwired into the OS". Try deleting everything on your system with "quicktime" in the name one day and see how well it functions.
So where does OS X fit into your reasoning ?
This is incorrect. If you rip Quicktime or WebCore out of OS X, you'll break it. If you rip khtml out of KDE, you'll break it. Etc, etc.
For Linux and *BSD, you don't HAVE to use Firefox if you use a certain Window Manager, in OSX you don't HAVE to use Safari if you don't wish to (and I think you can choose not to install it or at least get rid of it). In WinXP, you HAVE to keep IE on the system for functionality.
You are comparing apples and oranges ("have to use Safari" vs "have to keep IE on the system"). You don't *have* to use IE for anything except Windows Update, if you don't want to (and how is that any different from having to use OS X's included "Software Updater" ?). Personally, I haven't fired up IE to browse the web for over a year now.
You can delete Safari from OS X by dumping it in the trash. Similarly, you can delete the IE web browser front end by deleting iexplore.exe. Neither of these actions deletes the entire package - WebCore remains on OS X and the IE engine remains in Windows.
In the *nix's and OSX you don't HAVE to use or even keep the media players provided to you but you HAVE to keep WMP (insert version here) in order to keep functionality.
No you don't. You can delete the WMP .exe if you want. Of course that doesn't delete the guts of WMP, but then deleting the Quicktime player out of OS X doesn't delete the guts of Quicktime either.
And still, no-one has managed to explain why having a piece of software installed by default stops people using the alternatives.
Have you frequented any other website except /. for the last five years ?
Have you ever wondered why all of a sudden the advancement of this field ground to a complete halt?
Maybe because - as in all fields - once a minimum level of acceptable functionality is reached, advancement slows dramatically ?
Oh yes, wasn't it just about the time that MS dominated the web browser market by using their OS monopoly to fund development, made IE impossible to uninstall, and incorporated code in the OS to specifically break competitors software.
Break which software ?
I'm also at something of a loss as to why not being able to uninstall IE is related to slowing browser development. It's not like using another web browser has ever been difficult.
Read it. The mere fact that the court did not consider MacOS to be a competitor/alternative to Windows was enough to convince me it was bunk.
If you pull the OS X or Linux+KDE/Linux+GNOME equivalents to IE and WMP out of them, you break them just as efficiently as pulling them out of Windows does.
And because the tight OS intergration MS is able to make thier browser and media player appear to be better products.
How ?
Then when people try out other systems products (Firefox, Quicktime, whatever) on their Windows machine, they appear inferior to IE/WMP because they do not have the OS advantage.
What is this "OS advantage" ?
Amazing, though, isn't it, how this "terrible idea" and bad "engineering" has since been emulated by every other major desktop platform.
Everything you have just written applies equally to both WMP and IE.
Where are they ?
What are these "customisation of installation options" he wanted to do ?
You want exactly the same thing I want - and have been asking for since the iMac was first released - a headless iMac.
It's what the Mac Mini *should* have been - although, if they were to release one today, they could call it...PowerMac Mini !
Undoubtedly, but the point I'm trying to get across here is that young people - typically - do not drink responsibly. This is merely an extension of their overall poor ability at assessing risk and - directly relevant to this conversation - is exhibited in their over-representation in road death statistics.
Or, to put it more bluntly, young people are vastly more likely to get pissed and do something stupid.
Of course more young people do this because young people go out and socialise more in pubs and clubs.
No, more young people do this because typically young people do not drink sensibly.
"Old people" go out and drink alcohol at least as frequently as "young people" do. The difference is they have a few glasses of wine at a restaurant, not half a dozen jugs of beer in a pub full of similarly ego-challenged peers.
It doesn't necessarily mean that they are more likely to drink drive and it doesn't mean that they need different drink driving rules to older people.
Statistics, psychology and (mounds of) anecdotal evidence disagree with you. Young people *are* more likely to drink - and drink excessively - then drive. Young people *are* more likely to do this regularly. Young people *are* more likely to drive recklessly when drunk (instead of just making their way home slowly via the back streets). This is just another manifestation of their poor risk assessment abilities.
There are many psychologists who have argued that young people - *particularly* males - shouldn't be allowed to drive unsupervised at all until they're well into their 20s (personally I wouldn't go that far).
Most importantly, the positive impact on the road toll demographics that targeted drink-driving laws have wrought demonstrate they *do* need different drink driving rules to older people.
Young people are (generally) not as good drivers as older people (to a point). This is not really due to a lack of technical skills, but due to their general attitude and lack of experience. Good, responsible driving is about 80% attitude and about 20% physical skill. Take away that physical skill capability and debilitate the attitude (as alcohol does - quickly and insidiously) and the comparison gets even worse.
That's no simpler than the 0.05 system. Asking yourself 'if I had a beer an hour ago when will I be at zero again?' is the same as 'if I had a beer an hour ago how near to 0.05 am I'.
I think you're missing my point. "If you drink, you don't drive" means exactly that - if you have a drink at dinner, you get a taxi (or a lift) home - or you just don't drink. The objective is to avoid requiring people to keep track of how much they've had to drink at all.
However, I'd settle for the 0.05 (or even a 0.08) limit if a legally-binding personal breathalyser was available - both to individuals and (by law) at every licensed establishment.
I'll say it again - the NSW govt. reduced the limit for p-platers from 0.02 to 0.00. 0.00 is no more 0.02 than 0.07 is 0.05.
I'd be interested to hear if this has been contested in court yet - because while the NSW state government is notoriously draconian with their road rules (although still aspiring to the lengths the Victorian gov't is prepared to go to) I can't imagine that would stand up against a legal challenge (assuming the P plater who got picked up with a 0.01 BAC really hadn't had anything to drink).
It's not even that good. The Mini has a Radeon *9200*. The same video card that was in my PC laptop 3 years ago.
More importantly, the Mini's video card is incapable of accelerating the fancy new graphical effects in Tiger[0] (something they _must_ have known when designing it) - and people whinge about Microsoft's "planned obselesence"...
[0] This was the second reason I won't buy a Mini. The first was it not being a G5. Ho hum, still waiting for a headless iMac...
Historically, the ship has been pretty expendable (which personally I've found rather disappointing)...
Statistics say otherwise. The percentage of young binge drinkers is a lot higher than percentage of old binge drinkers.
There's no medical reason why being older than a p-plater would make your driving less affected by alcohol.
Actually there is - tolerance build-up over time.
Added to that are the more important psychological reasons I mentioned earlier. Young people - particularly drunk young people - are very poor at risk assessment.
The problem is not so much that younger people's driving is more affected by alcohol, it's that younger people are more likely to drive drunk, more likely to drive recklessly and far less likely to have significant driving experience to get them out of trouble if/when they get into it.
Besides, I don't think this'd have significant impact because the problem is one of enforcement of the existing rules - if people don't obey 0.05 they sure as hell won't obey zero.
OTOH, it would streamline the whole procedure a lot more - if you measure at all, you're busted.
Anyway we shouldn't have to give up our priveleges just to get a few rich people for harsher drink drive penalties.
That's not my reason. My reason is to make the system fair and remove any possibility of confusion on behalf of those wondering whether or not they're right to drive. If you drink, you don't drive - simple.
In NSW it *used* to be 0.02 for p-platers before they dropped it to zero. IANAL but I doubt they'd drop it to zero and then say 'oh well its actually zero up to 0.02 that's OK, even though we just changed it from 0.02'. This is probably different in QLD.
As I said, I'm pretty sure you'll find the legal definition of "zero" is 0.02 - it just get marketed as zero so people don't think they can get away with, say, a single light beer (which would probably only put you at 0.02 anyway).
It can't be absolutely zero because there are many things that can quite innocently get alcohol into the bloodstream (some medicines, for example) and in particular things that can fool breathalysers (some breath mints, certain types of saliva, etc).
However, they*have _significantly_ reduced it.
Although I have to wonder which of your "civil liberties" are being "infringed" by not being allowed to maneuver 1500kg+ of metal around in public while drunk.