Palin was near declaring war on Russia during the election process.
Did I miss the part of the US Constitution that says a candidate for Vice President can declare war?
Actually, I think the OP meant that Tina Fey was near declaring war on Russia.:) This is especially true since many among the left-leaning crowd on Slashdot have a propensity for getting the two confused.
The OP wasn't talking about people who log into the admin panel and don't upgrade even though they're told they need to - he was talking about people who don't "regularly visit [their] admin panel" in the first people. At that point, punctuality isn't the problem - keeping informed is.
I understand that contributors/authors who haven't any access to the administrative features won't be able to see the version (but that also assumes they wouldn't be in a position to upgrade either). But really, what's the point of using WordPress if you're not going to use the admin panel? It shows a wonderful overview of comments, spam, drafts, and so forth. I would assume that the idea of never visiting the dashboard enough to notice new versions might be applicable to those use cases of individuals who make a post once every 2 months.
What's the point of offering it if they don't use it? Also, their blog has such a terrible noise-to-quality ratio that it's absolutely useless in this regard. All I care about is whether a new version is available or not - I couldn't care less about what new "awesome" features they've added or are trying to add - I just want to update my blog when new versions are released and leave it at that.
The admin dashboard alerts you whenever a new version is available. You don't even need to register with/check their site.
Reading comprehension would lead one to the conclusion he thinks SCII should be the same as "WoW". Guess what, people with dial-up don't play WoW.
I know this might come as a surprise, but I know of a few people who do/have play(ed) via dial-up. Their connection isn't stable, I'm sure the quality of play isn't great, but they still do it--because they can't get broadband and like the game.
On the other hand, I read in some study (in Spanish) where they show that the majority of people in Mexico drink Coke (or pepsi, but mostly Coke) while eating, instead of water. This because Coke is cheaper and easier to get than drinkable-water.
This is really fascinating, because I would have never thought that a bottled softdrink product would be more obtainable (although I can see it being safer in some locations!) than water.
Aside: Don't be petty. The "we" in the OP's statement was referring to Americans who came before him. I'm sure if he meant himself, he would have said "I," but that would have been impossible given the circumstances.;)
Problem is, with that attitude it's guaranteed that sooner or later they're going to tell you can't do something that isn't fine with you. That's the nature of government, and the "fuck you, Jack, I"m all right" approach just doesn't work in the long run. You see, your rights don't end where mine begin... they're one and the same, and if we don't take care of each other in this regard, we all suffer.
Exactly. Ignorance, particularly with regard to governmental policies, has done more to enslave the population than to free it.
First the smokers, then the drinkers, then the fatties, and now the Internet. At this rate, what little bit of the First Amendment we have left will be gone in a couple of years. All in the name of security^Wemergency.
I'm just about as liberal as they come and I'd gladly jettison Pelosi and Reid for some competent leadership, but 'the administration' is Obama and the Whitehouse, not Congress.
Pelosi and Reid may not be the administration, but if you don't believe they have a significant pull over what Obama does (hint: nothing without their express blessing), you're kidding yourself. I'm not even so sure that the administration is fully aware of the power drain they have suffered with this congress...
and plugins well just depends on how much you trust the external plugin.
You eventually have to trust someone, somewhere. Be it MS or the individual responsible for NoScript. Schneier wrote an interesting piece on countering "trusting trust."
Given that the js engine is loaded with security problems, its likely that java and flash are too
Likely that Flash is to? There have been far more zero day exploits in Flash than have been present in Mozilla's JS engine that were widely and actively exploited. Worse, Adobe sits on these exploits for weeks before doing anything about it.
You really just want to block all of this out by default and allow certain websites to run them as needed.
Guess what NoScript does? You don't need to muck with profile settings, either.
Javascript itself really should not be a problem if it were not for security problems in javascript itself.
I think you mean the issues with JS implementations?
privacy violation however is what cookies are specifically intended for.
Cookies are a way for a server to sustain a stateful session by passing information back to a user agent; the user agent returns the information back to the server on its next visit.
Just because something can be used to violate your privacy doesn't mean it is expressly intended to do so.
On firefox? Cant do it without the plugin! Furthermore, IEs feature is a part of a security profiles feature which included a huge number of site features you could turn off, including many others like cookies. You would create a series of profiles, and then establish certain settings in that profile, then add websites to the profile. You could therefore control multiple things through the profiles. Cant do it with firefox.
While NoScript may only work with scripts, they're the most fundamental cause of malicious code running in the browser. Frankly, I think NoScript is a lot easier to use than setting up numerous profiles for a bunch of sites. Don't want scripts running? Click the button, click block.
Ironically, there's a point when mucking about with so many things oblivious users wouldn't understand that it's easier to say "Here, install this browser. Now, install this plugin. You're set." Don't believe me? Try to picture the process of explaining what you stated to someone who's 100% clueless about what a browser even does.
No, I see a lot of fat people here in Israel. In fact, people here are much less ashamed and self-conscious about their waistline than in the United States or the UK.
It's part of a more popular movement, I think. There's an increasing demonization of fat people in the US as the cause for a majority of our problems (just wait 'til some US Slashdotters get wind of this post and start going on about the healthcare costs of fat people--you'll see).
Sadly, the country that declares itself as the most free in the world (the US) is the one that is most preoccupied with the lifestyles of its citizens.
Besides, the administration likely has access to your physical address, phone number, social security number, employer, mothers maiden name, etc etc. So no, the fact that they might conceivably, possibly have my email address doesn't really concern me.
I'd like to argue the whole "we started it!" thing. But, that's interesting. Asian culture was always known for being slim and trim, so one has to wonder if it's Westernization of their cuisine that is contributing to this.
Regardless, I find it amusing that some people (the GP now) claim it's the US that is the fattest country on earth when everyone else seems to be suffering from ever expanding waistlines, too.
That certainly sheds light on those who are arguing that MS ought to argue against software patents in court rather than pushing for specific legislation.
Specifically you mean the United States world... Other developed nations do not have our problem for one reason or another.
Let's be fair here. It's not just the United States. I think there's a disproportionate number of predominantly Caucasian Westernized countries that are of expanding waistline girth.
asking the Supreme Court to strike down all software patents, reducing their potential legal liability tremendously.
I agree with your points. Wouldn't it take an act of Congress, rather, to change the law? I can't see the Supreme Court striking down software patents in a broad stroke.
Unfortunately, with Congress consisting mostly crooks, I can't imagine they'd do anything--you know--sensible...
This is not my issue, my issue is with the all icon interface, I do this anyway (it's second nature now so I forget that I even do it) but even if I do this I'm still stuck with the all icon (no text) interface. There is less information at a glance and they have taken away much pertinent information like what each program is doing. I have to mouse over a minimised RDP session to find out which server it is connected to, the will amount to a large loss of productivity when there are multiple RDP sessions. The same is true for multiple doc's, web browsers, IM sessions and explorer windows.
Setting the taskbar to "combine when taskbar is full" restores behavior analogous to Windows XP. If you'd rather retain text on all of your taskbar buttons, set it to "never combine." Even with about 2 dozen applications running (1680x1050), the text is still readable if you set the taskbar to "never combine." Admittedly there are no tooltips on mouse over, and this might be your primary complaint. (I confess I don't have the same problem related to remote desktops; whenever I use something like SSH and have 4-6 sessions or more, my spatial memory is decent enough that I can remember which goes where. If the order gets screwed, I become lost, but that was only an issue in XP when explorer would die; not everyone can remember these things, so an option for tooltips might be a good thing!)
Is it an awful default? Yes, it is. It's horrible. But it can be changed.
Now you are misreading my posts. I didn't say it was bad, I said it introduces new problems (complexity). The vast majority of users do not care that much about customisation beyond the screen saver/background but some do. A balance must be reached in order, hence the two sides (simplicity vs options).
No, I don't think so, and here's why: You spent a significant part of your post complaining about the specific features you find most awful about Windows 7. Then you next argue tangentially in a direction against complexity; implicitly, this suggests something vastly different from what you now claim you were initially arguing. This struck me as something that annoyed you about operating systems in general, and thus you felt the need to complain about it. As a consequence, given my personality, I felt the need to "poke the bear," and drop a couple of lines about sticking with bash, csh, ksh, or whatever sh floats your boat. Evidently my poking worked as it got you to clarify your point, yes?
In either case, it read as if you were suggesting it is a bad thing. Context is important.
True about start-up times in general. It seems like an issue for users with ADHD, it costs nothing to be patient for a minute or two more. My big issue is with entropy, windows getting slower over time (with regular use). It does happen with XP, 98, Vista or any version of windows I've used for 3 or more months so it's a fair bet it will happen with 7. with XP I have a 4 GB image of my C: that can be rolled on in 1/2 an hour, with 7, it will be 3 times that with drivers and default programs (Open Office, SumatraPDF and so on).
For what it's worth, I haven't noticed a marked increase in boot-up times in Windows 7, and I've been using it off and on since the public beta (with a reinstall after the May 5th release of the public RC). During that same period, I reinstalled XP (mostly to generate a fresh image on new hardware) and here's what I've seen:
After about 3 months of use, Windows 7 hasn't slowed, and I've been using it frequently.
Windows XP has marked degradation, and I've been using it infrequently!
Seeing as I built my new gaming PC 3 months ago I will probably be on XP for a while now. Long enough for MS and OEM's to get the bugs out of everything and make things a wee bit faster.
You do realise there are more modern English translations than the King James version. They are in modern English, as opposed to 400 year old English so it makes sense. The newer translations also use better versions of the ancient texts as their starting point.
Seriously? I never knew that!
Sarcasm aside, it's important to consider that many of the current English translations (including the various "New International" incantations and living Bibles) base themselves heavily off of the King James translation with some updated cross-references to the older texts. Frankly, I haven't seen much that's ground-breaking in terms of the English translations. If you have such a specimen, I'd be happy to examine it, so please share.
I think you're being a little unfair (or trolling). I'll bite. First, a qualifier:
I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I confess that I like Windows 7. (To qualify: I used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS for about 1.5 years, switched to XP when I had a semester of.NET development at uni, and then recently switched to Win 7 to try it out with the public beta--I've been impressed thus far.)
Looks and 'feels' aren't going to increase productivity. The complete lack of text on the task bar means I have to learn what each icon represents and then have to mouse over it or open the item to figure out what it actually is. In XP or Vista I can just look at the task bar and figure out which server's I've RDP's and SSH'd into, what page my browser is on, any IM's demanding my attention and who they are from. I'm going to lose a crap load of productivity from this alone and probably some hair as well. There are good reasons we favour text based language over a pictogram or hieroglyphic language, complex text is far easier to read.
Spend about 5 minutes learning the OS. The new taskbar wasn't something I appreciated at first--but it grows on you. Although another couple folks have already suggested this fix, here's mine: Right-click your start button, go to properties, and under the Taskbar tab, change "taskbar buttons" to "combine when taskbar is full." Poof! Text magically appears on your buttons. I don't select "never combine" as someone else suggested, because I happen to like having similar applications groups together.
Fancy that.
That stupid "network and sharing centre" is still there, still trying to tell me that it knows what to do with my network. Why do I have to assign a "location" popup to every different DHCP address I get, the OS should handle this invisibly.
I agree the network and sharing center is stupidly designed (and severely dumbed down). I'll grant you this. I haven't noticed the DHCP issue, but then... I don't use 7 on a laptop. I suspect this might just be specific to your configuration, however.
Customisability is a two edged sword, with customisability comes more chances for something critical to fail. I'm not saying that extenisve customisability is a bad thing but most users will only change their screensaver and background. Some will pick a different pre-selected colour "theme" but most will leave it as default. Most users do not care about customisability beyond major superficial points like the background.
That's being a bit petty, IMO. Gnome, KDE, and just about every other user-facing desktop allows for the customization of some things. Are they bad? Maybe.
If it were as horrible as you suggest, perhaps you should stick with bash? csh, maybe? Actually, forget I said that bit about csh.
Actually, screw this bit about multiprocessing OSes. Why not head back to a modern DOS-based system?
Game performance is nowhere near the level of XP and the old games which didn't work in Vista still don't work in 7. I'm not completely cynical however, I know 7 is still immature and many of the drivers will have issues. It will take time for the drivers (esp graphics drivers) to mature.
Umm, I haven't noticed a difference. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games, but the ones I do play actually appear to have a higher average framerate (~5-10, so it's within the margin of error) than XP.
Unfortunately in the Windows world, upgrades are synonymous with planned obsolescence. If you want your old games to work, run your favorite Linux distro and install them under Wine (no, I'm not kidding). I got Carmageddon 2 to play just fine (joystick included) under Wine. I could never get it working, even under XP.
It doesn't state it outright, but they got the 6000 number by adding up lifetimes in the various genealogies given. So, unless some of those people lived a few million years, then yes the bible does in fact imply that the Earth is 6000 years old.
That was an interpretation by Catholic monks around the 1400s-1500s*. I believe the Catholic church has even renounced this claim.
Interestingly, if you read the Hebrew version of Genesis, there is some evidence that other humans were alive at the time of Adam and Eve (Adam had sexual relations with others of his kind--but where did they come from if they weren't created?). There are some who claim that the difference between Adam and Eve lies primarily in that they were the first humans to have the spirit of God breathed into them.
I might suggest reading The Science of God and Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald L. Schroeder. While he's a physicist, he's also a biblical scholar and makes very different claims of Genesis than religious and non-religious sorts alike. As a consequence, he has some enemies on both sides of the fence. Personally, I find his interpretation most interesting.
But, I would guess that's part of the interesting bit with religious texts. It's easy to make inferences and interpretations about their claims in nearly any direction. Your case is a particularly good example as you suggest that the Bible implicitly states the Earth is 6000 years old. If the claim is not made directly, it is best to err on the side of caution.
* It is important to recall that a significant chunk of the Old Testament was created from memory by Jewish rabbis after having been mostly destroyed in a fire. Thus, much of what we have available today very likely doesn't read as it was intended. This says nothing of the translations done under King James. English is a decent language for certain abstractions, but it's absolutely terrible when a text with more specific words is translated into generic English constructs. To illustrate: the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill" in Hebrew reads as "Thou shalt not commit premeditated murder." The difference is subtle (and probably unimportant during King James' time), but in our day and age, it can be taken to suggest that killing of any sort is bad.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I think the OP meant that Tina Fey was near declaring war on Russia. :) This is especially true since many among the left-leaning crowd on Slashdot have a propensity for getting the two confused.
I understand that contributors/authors who haven't any access to the administrative features won't be able to see the version (but that also assumes they wouldn't be in a position to upgrade either). But really, what's the point of using WordPress if you're not going to use the admin panel? It shows a wonderful overview of comments, spam, drafts, and so forth. I would assume that the idea of never visiting the dashboard enough to notice new versions might be applicable to those use cases of individuals who make a post once every 2 months.
The admin dashboard alerts you whenever a new version is available. You don't even need to register with/check their site.
If you're using your monopole to embrace and extend, I'm kinda worried about the extinguishing part...
I think my Internets have had too many memes. I read that as:
I know this might come as a surprise, but I know of a few people who do/have play(ed) via dial-up. Their connection isn't stable, I'm sure the quality of play isn't great, but they still do it--because they can't get broadband and like the game.
This is really fascinating, because I would have never thought that a bottled softdrink product would be more obtainable (although I can see it being safer in some locations!) than water.
Did you read the article I linked to? The Aussies have the US beat.
God installed Interwebs in the hereafter.
Aside: Don't be petty. The "we" in the OP's statement was referring to Americans who came before him. I'm sure if he meant himself, he would have said "I," but that would have been impossible given the circumstances. ;)
Exactly. Ignorance, particularly with regard to governmental policies, has done more to enslave the population than to free it.
First the smokers, then the drinkers, then the fatties, and now the Internet. At this rate, what little bit of the First Amendment we have left will be gone in a couple of years. All in the name of security^Wemergency.
I'd say about 2000 years ago, but that just wound up pissing off a bunch of Romans.
Pelosi and Reid may not be the administration, but if you don't believe they have a significant pull over what Obama does (hint: nothing without their express blessing), you're kidding yourself. I'm not even so sure that the administration is fully aware of the power drain they have suffered with this congress...
You eventually have to trust someone, somewhere. Be it MS or the individual responsible for NoScript. Schneier wrote an interesting piece on countering "trusting trust."
Likely that Flash is to? There have been far more zero day exploits in Flash than have been present in Mozilla's JS engine that were widely and actively exploited. Worse, Adobe sits on these exploits for weeks before doing anything about it.
Guess what NoScript does? You don't need to muck with profile settings, either.
I think you mean the issues with JS implementations?
No they're not:
Just because something can be used to violate your privacy doesn't mean it is expressly intended to do so.
While NoScript may only work with scripts, they're the most fundamental cause of malicious code running in the browser. Frankly, I think NoScript is a lot easier to use than setting up numerous profiles for a bunch of sites. Don't want scripts running? Click the button, click block.
Ironically, there's a point when mucking about with so many things oblivious users wouldn't understand that it's easier to say "Here, install this browser. Now, install this plugin. You're set." Don't believe me? Try to picture the process of explaining what you stated to someone who's 100% clueless about what a browser even does.
Seems like a brilliant ploy to me.
It's part of a more popular movement, I think. There's an increasing demonization of fat people in the US as the cause for a majority of our problems (just wait 'til some US Slashdotters get wind of this post and start going on about the healthcare costs of fat people--you'll see).
Sadly, the country that declares itself as the most free in the world (the US) is the one that is most preoccupied with the lifestyles of its citizens.
What about if this were two or three years ago?
I'd like to argue the whole "we started it!" thing. But, that's interesting. Asian culture was always known for being slim and trim, so one has to wonder if it's Westernization of their cuisine that is contributing to this.
Regardless, I find it amusing that some people (the GP now) claim it's the US that is the fattest country on earth when everyone else seems to be suffering from ever expanding waistlines, too.
Ah! Very interesting, thank you!
That certainly sheds light on those who are arguing that MS ought to argue against software patents in court rather than pushing for specific legislation.
Let's be fair here. It's not just the United States. I think there's a disproportionate number of predominantly Caucasian Westernized countries that are of expanding waistline girth.
I agree with your points. Wouldn't it take an act of Congress, rather, to change the law? I can't see the Supreme Court striking down software patents in a broad stroke.
Unfortunately, with Congress consisting mostly crooks, I can't imagine they'd do anything--you know--sensible...
Setting the taskbar to "combine when taskbar is full" restores behavior analogous to Windows XP. If you'd rather retain text on all of your taskbar buttons, set it to "never combine." Even with about 2 dozen applications running (1680x1050), the text is still readable if you set the taskbar to "never combine." Admittedly there are no tooltips on mouse over, and this might be your primary complaint. (I confess I don't have the same problem related to remote desktops; whenever I use something like SSH and have 4-6 sessions or more, my spatial memory is decent enough that I can remember which goes where. If the order gets screwed, I become lost, but that was only an issue in XP when explorer would die; not everyone can remember these things, so an option for tooltips might be a good thing!)
Is it an awful default? Yes, it is. It's horrible. But it can be changed.
No, I don't think so, and here's why: You spent a significant part of your post complaining about the specific features you find most awful about Windows 7. Then you next argue tangentially in a direction against complexity; implicitly, this suggests something vastly different from what you now claim you were initially arguing. This struck me as something that annoyed you about operating systems in general, and thus you felt the need to complain about it. As a consequence, given my personality, I felt the need to "poke the bear," and drop a couple of lines about sticking with bash, csh, ksh, or whatever sh floats your boat. Evidently my poking worked as it got you to clarify your point, yes?
In either case, it read as if you were suggesting it is a bad thing. Context is important.
For what it's worth, I haven't noticed a marked increase in boot-up times in Windows 7, and I've been using it off and on since the public beta (with a reinstall after the May 5th release of the public RC). During that same period, I reinstalled XP (mostly to generate a fresh image on new hardware) and here's what I've seen:
I would probably recommend the same for most g
Seriously? I never knew that!
Sarcasm aside, it's important to consider that many of the current English translations (including the various "New International" incantations and living Bibles) base themselves heavily off of the King James translation with some updated cross-references to the older texts. Frankly, I haven't seen much that's ground-breaking in terms of the English translations. If you have such a specimen, I'd be happy to examine it, so please share.
I think you're being a little unfair (or trolling). I'll bite. First, a qualifier:
I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I confess that I like Windows 7. (To qualify: I used Gentoo as my primary desktop OS for about 1.5 years, switched to XP when I had a semester of .NET development at uni, and then recently switched to Win 7 to try it out with the public beta--I've been impressed thus far.)
Spend about 5 minutes learning the OS. The new taskbar wasn't something I appreciated at first--but it grows on you. Although another couple folks have already suggested this fix, here's mine: Right-click your start button, go to properties, and under the Taskbar tab, change "taskbar buttons" to "combine when taskbar is full." Poof! Text magically appears on your buttons. I don't select "never combine" as someone else suggested, because I happen to like having similar applications groups together.
Fancy that.
I agree the network and sharing center is stupidly designed (and severely dumbed down). I'll grant you this. I haven't noticed the DHCP issue, but then... I don't use 7 on a laptop. I suspect this might just be specific to your configuration, however.
That's being a bit petty, IMO. Gnome, KDE, and just about every other user-facing desktop allows for the customization of some things. Are they bad? Maybe.
If it were as horrible as you suggest, perhaps you should stick with bash? csh, maybe? Actually, forget I said that bit about csh.
Actually, screw this bit about multiprocessing OSes. Why not head back to a modern DOS-based system?
Umm, I haven't noticed a difference. Mind you, I don't play a lot of games, but the ones I do play actually appear to have a higher average framerate (~5-10, so it's within the margin of error) than XP.
Unfortunately in the Windows world, upgrades are synonymous with planned obsolescence. If you want your old games to work, run your favorite Linux distro and install them under Wine (no, I'm not kidding). I got Carmageddon 2 to play just fine (joystick included) under Wine. I could never get it working, even under XP.
That was an interpretation by Catholic monks around the 1400s-1500s*. I believe the Catholic church has even renounced this claim.
Interestingly, if you read the Hebrew version of Genesis, there is some evidence that other humans were alive at the time of Adam and Eve (Adam had sexual relations with others of his kind--but where did they come from if they weren't created?). There are some who claim that the difference between Adam and Eve lies primarily in that they were the first humans to have the spirit of God breathed into them.
I might suggest reading The Science of God and Genesis and the Big Bang by Gerald L. Schroeder. While he's a physicist, he's also a biblical scholar and makes very different claims of Genesis than religious and non-religious sorts alike. As a consequence, he has some enemies on both sides of the fence. Personally, I find his interpretation most interesting.
But, I would guess that's part of the interesting bit with religious texts. It's easy to make inferences and interpretations about their claims in nearly any direction. Your case is a particularly good example as you suggest that the Bible implicitly states the Earth is 6000 years old. If the claim is not made directly, it is best to err on the side of caution.
* It is important to recall that a significant chunk of the Old Testament was created from memory by Jewish rabbis after having been mostly destroyed in a fire. Thus, much of what we have available today very likely doesn't read as it was intended. This says nothing of the translations done under King James. English is a decent language for certain abstractions, but it's absolutely terrible when a text with more specific words is translated into generic English constructs. To illustrate: the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill" in Hebrew reads as "Thou shalt not commit premeditated murder." The difference is subtle (and probably unimportant during King James' time), but in our day and age, it can be taken to suggest that killing of any sort is bad.