Why on earth would an organization wanting secure desktops give their users full admin access? That goes for Windows and Linux. There is *no* reason that a corporate user needs to have an admin account.
The reason that this is likely to be the case with Windows is software which requires elevated privileges in order to run. It need not even be old software (written originally for Win9X) it could just as easily be software written by developers who always run as admin. This dosn't tend to happen with Linux, since programmers tend to understand that it is a bad idea, it isn't that obvious how to make every user "root", any program which refused to run without privileges it didn't actually need would be fixed PDQ, unix type systems have the concept of setuid/gid executables, etc.
You fail, just like MS, to differentiate between machine user and machine admin.
This appears to be a deliberate idea of Microsoft's. So that they could use marketing slogans about not needing (expensive) admins to manage Windows systems.
While a stupid windows user has full admin access out of the box to all his settings, config, hardware setup etc.
In many cases Windows applications actually need this in order to work. With such programs continuing to be written. Not only have Microsoft not really got a handle on the separation of "user" and "admin" third party Windows application writers havn't either.
Microsoft still want us to believe that the only way to integrate is to run One System (theirs) everywhere. They don't get (more precisely: don't want to) common open standards and protocols.
A similar argument is Microsoft implying the "integrated applications means the coding for these applications needs to be intermingled. Effectivly deliberatly writing "sphagetti code".
Re:I thought I would do this...
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Firefly was too complicated. Network execs are PHBs, they don't like complicated. They want shows that their children (who usually are homozygous recessive for the PHB gene) can understand, shows about clothes, and having sex with the wrong people, and cars, and football. A show about a bunch of space-smuggling horse-riding misfits who were on the losing side of a failed revolution and eke out their living by breaking the laws of the oppressive winning side while trying not to bend morality too far, and trying (and often failing) to remain loyal to their ideals and one another - that's all about tone and nuance.
Not helped by real world events. When most of characters qualify as "terrorists". Or that the only "legit" member of the crew is a postitute.
Re:I thought I would do this...
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 1
For the time B5 was awesome...remember it started over 10 years ago...sure the effects are a bit dated, but if you like the story, it was pretty cool...look how cheap and crappy "Dr Who" is....but it gained a following from having good stories..often.
The same issue of dated special effects applies to Dr Who. For the time these were "cutting edge", in some cases Dr Who was the very first time certain effects were used...
Re:I thought I would do this...
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I just bought the Firefly set - $40, 13 shows, a bit over $3 per episode. Let's imagine it takes $3m to make an episode. You only need to sell 2m discs to double your money. And this is 2m discs worldwide - not just to Americans who prefer tripe.
Or at least that's the view of the TV executives.
Truthfully, if I could "subscribe" to a show like firefly for even $5 an episode, I would (I would want to have a DVD to keep). 20 minutes of my time (commercial breaks) is worth a hell of a lot more than $5 so even at $5/ep.
Or you might even get nearly an hour of actual content. One thing to remember is that without the commercial breaks the structure of the programme would have no reason to follow the US broadcast norm.
it would be a steal, and probably make the studio money.
But it would do nothing for the broadcaster...
Re:My idea for how Angel can be saved
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 1
Start the new season with the same cast and about 20 demons. Then, week to week, a demon is voted off the show and killed.
More fun if you also have the option to vote for the humans to turn bad, get killed, turned into vampires etc. But for best effect you need a global 8x3 or 6x4 channel.
Re:Go Out with a Bang
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Maybe now Joss Whedon will get busy on that "Ripper" idea he wanted to do for the BBC. (That, and the "Firefly" movie.)
Whatever Joss really needs to get out of Hollywood. Since his talent is not apreciated there.
Re:Oh, you had to do it....
on
WB Cancels Angel
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Speaking as a long-time fan, its main draw-back was that the storyline was often too complex for most people to simply watch a random episode and understand everything (which is why it had troubles finding new fans in the second season). However, if you took the time to actually watched three or four episodes in a row, the story was immensly involving (ie, it drew you in and glued your eyes to the screen week after week).
Assuming it was actually broadcast in such a way. There's a good argument that anything with any kind of "arc" should not have it's first showing on any of the American networks. Because their scheduling methodology tends to be mutually exclusive with simply showing the episodes in order.
That show is doing the same thing, I read somewhere. It started out as a teenage drama and now it has mixed demos.
If you have a "teenage drama" which concentrates on a single group of characters then both the characters and the show will have to "grow up". There is actually a formula which will give you a perpetual teen-drama. That is a soap opera set in a school which does not focus too much on too few characters. Nothing appears to be stopping The WB making an American version of "Grange Hill" though...
In other words: Buffy, despite its considerable appeal to teenagers, quickly became a grown-up show,
Strangely enough teenagers grow up.
and the WB doesn't want grown-up shows.
The issue appears to be more that no-one, at least amongst the US networks, wants such shows. The concept of adult oriented fantasy/sci-fi/etc appears to be a quite hard sell to many TV executives.
Now Angel's done the same. So clearly, it has to go.
Angel never had more than one teenage character at once in the first place. Yet, paradoxically, had a lower average character age than Buffy...
Re:This would be in America. right?
on
Cell-Phone Wars
·
· Score: 1
I don't know about US networks, but in the GSM network, emergency calls (112) have to get through even if you are on a different network, or haven't paid your subscription.
As is so often the case the US does things differently. Even to the point that companies supplying telephone hardware have one product range for the NANP and one for the rest of the planet. Remember all the fuss about the US wanting to enforce a non GSM system on Iraq.
I think al Quaeda is already up there. The Moon's surface is somewhat similar to Afghanistan, and the President's intelligence has strongly indicated that Osama Bin Laden is hiding in a Moon cave.
Just him or a large pile of Iraqi WMDs? Maybe you should go check it out... Similarly if the US President still believes in these kind of daft conspiracy theories he can go check them out.
It's bit like trying to trademark the word "Petrol" for a combustion engine based car.
Or even as a brand of fuel for spark-ignition engines.
It's simple a common word when used in certain context.
But it is acceptable to trademark words which are used outside their usual context. e.g. "Amazon" as a bookseller, which has nothing to do with either South American rivers or Eurasian women warriors.
Why must the/. "editors" put a negative spin on everything Microsoft does? If Red Hat were in a law suit to defend their most valuable brand name, would you expect them to lie down and play dead or fight it?
Microsoft have a weak trademark in the first place. One which is descriptive of their software. Red Hat has a more meritable trademark since coloured headgear has no obvious connection with their product.
Of course Microsoft (or any other company) is going to fight something like this.
Maybe Microsoft should have come up with a better trademark in the first place.
Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that.
The "we own you" can also include "we own your data". Which you'd thing a few executive type people would object to:)
If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows.
Ditto if organisations applied their regular financial policies/rules to software.
licensing costs and rights are undeniable though; that's one area that is not up for debate. What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...
If your company is dependent on such software even an accusation of non-compliance could result in bankruptcy...
As the product W is a commercial product, the sole reason for its existence is to bring money to the vendor. Money that comes only if the users decide to buy the product. Thus there is very strong incentive to listen to what the users of the product W want.
This can only be the case in a free market. Product W is not sold as a free market product. The supplier is a monopoly which uses all sorts of dodgy deals to strengthen that position.
This has been a concern of mine. Whenever I have to send a doc via email, it's ALWAYS assumed to be in some MS Office format.
In a great many cases the sensible format is PDF, which even Windows can handle. Unless you explicitally want the document alterable at the other end and you know exactly what you are doing any word processing format is a bad choice.
I seem to remember him admitting that the reason Australia was going to war was to help America.
Then he should renounce his Australian citizenship, go to the US and apply to become a US citizen. Who in their right mind wants a "leader" who's first loyalty is to a foreign country? This used to be considered to be "high treason", which might even still be a capitol crime in Australia.
The Free Trade agreement was an issue that was repeatedly brought up by politicians and the media as well as the need for American military protection.
What military threat is Australia facing which is beyond the ability of the Australian military to cope with?
What he did say quite explicitly, however, was that we needed to get involved in the Iraq invasion and occupation to show support to the USA in return for access to US intelligence data in the future. Is US intelligence data worth anything at all?
It might be worth something as source material for writing fiction books:)
Sometimes it amazes me how blatantly wrong and stupid our leaders can be, and how much of it we are willing to tolerate. Australians just don't seem to give shit.
Hardly something confined to Australia. The same thing appears to be true in North America and Europe too. Not only have many "leaders" completly lost the plot a large proportion of the populace don't realise that "democracy" means "rule by the people". With voting (especially if it involves a choice between similar candidates) certainly not being the only or even the most important part of an effective democratic process.
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Why on earth would an organization wanting secure desktops give their users full admin access? That goes for Windows and Linux. There is *no* reason that a corporate user needs to have an admin account.
The reason that this is likely to be the case with Windows is software which requires elevated privileges in order to run. It need not even be old software (written originally for Win9X) it could just as easily be software written by developers who always run as admin.
This dosn't tend to happen with Linux, since programmers tend to understand that it is a bad idea, it isn't that obvious how to make every user "root", any program which refused to run without privileges it didn't actually need would be fixed PDQ, unix type systems have the concept of setuid/gid executables, etc.
You fail, just like MS, to differentiate between machine user and machine admin.
This appears to be a deliberate idea of Microsoft's. So that they could use marketing slogans about not needing (expensive) admins to manage Windows systems.
While a stupid windows user has full admin access out of the box to all his settings, config, hardware setup etc.
In many cases Windows applications actually need this in order to work. With such programs continuing to be written. Not only have Microsoft not really got a handle on the separation of "user" and "admin" third party Windows application writers havn't either.
Microsoft still want us to believe that the only way to integrate is to run One System (theirs) everywhere. They don't get (more precisely: don't want to) common open standards and protocols.
A similar argument is Microsoft implying the "integrated applications means the coding for these applications needs to be intermingled. Effectivly deliberatly writing "sphagetti code".
Firefly was too complicated. Network execs are PHBs, they don't like complicated. They want shows that their children (who usually are homozygous recessive for the PHB gene) can understand, shows about clothes, and having sex with the wrong people, and cars, and football. A show about a bunch of space-smuggling horse-riding misfits who were on the losing side of a failed revolution and eke out their living by breaking the laws of the oppressive winning side while trying not to bend morality too far, and trying (and often failing) to remain loyal to their ideals and one another - that's all about tone and nuance.
Not helped by real world events. When most of characters qualify as "terrorists". Or that the only "legit" member of the crew is a postitute.
For the time B5 was awesome...remember it started over 10 years ago...sure the effects are a bit dated, but if you like the story, it was pretty cool...look how cheap and crappy "Dr Who" is ....but it gained a following from having good stories..often.
The same issue of dated special effects applies to Dr Who. For the time these were "cutting edge", in some cases Dr Who was the very first time certain effects were used...
I just bought the Firefly set - $40, 13 shows, a bit over $3 per episode. Let's imagine it takes $3m to make an episode. You only need to sell 2m discs to double your money. And this is 2m discs worldwide - not just to Americans who prefer tripe.
Or at least that's the view of the TV executives.
Truthfully, if I could "subscribe" to a show like firefly for even $5 an episode, I would (I would want to have a DVD to keep). 20 minutes of my time (commercial breaks) is worth a hell of a lot more than $5 so even at $5/ep.
Or you might even get nearly an hour of actual content. One thing to remember is that without the commercial breaks the structure of the programme would have no reason to follow the US broadcast norm.
it would be a steal, and probably make the studio money.
But it would do nothing for the broadcaster...
Start the new season with the same cast and about 20 demons. Then, week to week, a demon is voted off the show and killed.
More fun if you also have the option to vote for the humans to turn bad, get killed, turned into vampires etc.
But for best effect you need a global 8x3 or 6x4 channel.
Maybe now Joss Whedon will get busy on that "Ripper" idea he wanted to do for the BBC. (That, and the "Firefly" movie.)
Whatever Joss really needs to get out of Hollywood. Since his talent is not apreciated there.
Speaking as a long-time fan, its main draw-back was that the storyline was often too complex for most people to simply watch a random episode and understand everything (which is why it had troubles finding new fans in the second season). However, if you took the time to actually watched three or four episodes in a row, the story was immensly involving (ie, it drew you in and glued your eyes to the screen week after week).
Assuming it was actually broadcast in such a way. There's a good argument that anything with any kind of "arc" should not have it's first showing on any of the American networks. Because their scheduling methodology tends to be mutually exclusive with simply showing the episodes in order.
That show is doing the same thing, I read somewhere. It started out as a teenage drama and now it has mixed demos.
If you have a "teenage drama" which concentrates on a single group of characters then both the characters and the show will have to "grow up".
There is actually a formula which will give you a perpetual teen-drama. That is a soap opera set in a school which does not focus too much on too few characters. Nothing appears to be stopping The WB making an American version of "Grange Hill" though...
In other words: Buffy, despite its considerable appeal to teenagers, quickly became a grown-up show,
Strangely enough teenagers grow up.
and the WB doesn't want grown-up shows.
The issue appears to be more that no-one, at least amongst the US networks, wants such shows. The concept of adult oriented fantasy/sci-fi/etc appears to be a quite hard sell to many TV executives.
Now Angel's done the same. So clearly, it has to go.
Angel never had more than one teenage character at once in the first place. Yet, paradoxically, had a lower average character age than Buffy...
I don't know about US networks, but in the GSM network, emergency calls (112) have to get through even if you are on a different network, or haven't paid your subscription.
As is so often the case the US does things differently. Even to the point that companies supplying telephone hardware have one product range for the NANP and one for the rest of the planet. Remember all the fuss about the US wanting to enforce a non GSM system on Iraq.
Moving from cathedral to bazaar isn't easy.
As shown with Mozilla and OpenOffice.org.
I think al Quaeda is already up there. The Moon's surface is somewhat similar to Afghanistan, and the President's intelligence has strongly indicated that Osama Bin Laden is hiding in a Moon cave.
Just him or a large pile of Iraqi WMDs? Maybe you should go check it out... Similarly if the US President still believes in these kind of daft conspiracy theories he can go check them out.
Supplies get delivered to the launching facility in french guyana by boat, which is just as effective in getting stuff there.
The site being closer to the Equator than Florida. There is also "Sea Launch" capable of launching on the Equator.
So to enforce the trademark elsewhere but the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, etc sounds like a hollow victory.
A few more places than that. Given that English is the second most common language on the planet...
It's bit like trying to trademark the word "Petrol" for a combustion engine based car.
Or even as a brand of fuel for spark-ignition engines.
It's simple a common word when used in certain context.
But it is acceptable to trademark words which are used outside their usual context. e.g. "Amazon" as a bookseller, which has nothing to do with either South American rivers or Eurasian women warriors.
Why must the /. "editors" put a negative spin on everything Microsoft does? If Red Hat were in a law suit to defend their most valuable brand name, would you expect them to lie down and play dead or fight it?
Microsoft have a weak trademark in the first place. One which is descriptive of their software. Red Hat has a more meritable trademark since coloured headgear has no obvious connection with their product.
Of course Microsoft (or any other company) is going to fight something like this.
Maybe Microsoft should have come up with a better trademark in the first place.
Companies (and home users) should choose to leave Windows because of its licensing, first and foremost. The MS EULA basically says, "we own you" and people should take issue with that.
:)
The "we own you" can also include "we own your data". Which you'd thing a few executive type people would object to
If we all followed every license to the letter of the law, very few people would be using proprietary software -- especially Windows.
Ditto if organisations applied their regular financial policies/rules to software.
licensing costs and rights are undeniable though; that's one area that is not up for debate. What is the hidden cost of being tied down by fascist licensing? It costs you your freedom and subjects you to software audits. Violation of the EULA is US$200,000 and up to five years in jail...
If your company is dependent on such software even an accusation of non-compliance could result in bankruptcy...
Total Cost of Ownership is a marketing buzzword that is supposed to mean 'measurement of how much it costs to maintain'.
Very often the "Total" bit is bogus. Since isn't even a "good faith" attempt to measure total costs involved.
As the product W is a commercial product, the sole reason for its existence is to bring money to the vendor. Money that comes only if the users decide to buy the product. Thus there is very strong incentive to listen to what the users of the product W want.
This can only be the case in a free market. Product W is not sold as a free market product. The supplier is a monopoly which uses all sorts of dodgy deals to strengthen that position.
This has been a concern of mine. Whenever I have to send a doc via email, it's ALWAYS assumed to be in some MS Office format.
In a great many cases the sensible format is PDF, which even Windows can handle.
Unless you explicitally want the document alterable at the other end and you know exactly what you are doing any word processing format is a bad choice.
Features definitely do not equal value despite the propaganda that tries to convince people otherwise.
Also something in the "bells and whistles" catagory does not become a "feature" just because the marketing makes that claim.
I seem to remember him admitting that the reason Australia was going to war was to help America.
Then he should renounce his Australian citizenship, go to the US and apply to become a US citizen. Who in their right mind wants a "leader" who's first loyalty is to a foreign country? This used to be considered to be "high treason", which might even still be a capitol crime in Australia.
The Free Trade agreement was an issue that was repeatedly brought up by politicians and the media as well as the need for American military protection.
What military threat is Australia facing which is beyond the ability of the Australian military to cope with?
What he did say quite explicitly, however, was that we needed to get involved in the Iraq invasion and occupation to show support to the USA in return for access to US intelligence data in the future. Is US intelligence data worth anything at all?
:)
It might be worth something as source material for writing fiction books
Sometimes it amazes me how blatantly wrong and stupid our leaders can be, and how much of it we are willing to tolerate. Australians just don't seem to give shit.
Hardly something confined to Australia. The same thing appears to be true in North America and Europe too. Not only have many "leaders" completly lost the plot a large proportion of the populace don't realise that "democracy" means "rule by the people". With voting (especially if it involves a choice between similar candidates) certainly not being the only or even the most important part of an effective democratic process.