Why should anyone have a right to a new domain name just because they have some other domain name?
Just because you have "news.com" or "boobs.net" doesn't mean you own the words "news" or "boobs". If you're going to give favored access to existing domain holders, there's no public advantage whatsoever to adding new TLDs - it doesn't expand the name space, it just takes a bunch of cash from existing companies and gives it to the new registrar.
This claim that security holes are strictly an effect of popularity is blatantly wrong.
It's true that more security holes are exposed in popular software, but some software just has less security holes to be exposed. Building secure unix-like operating systems is a topic that a lot of people have put quite a bit of effort in to - for much longer than Windows has even existed. Both GNU/Linux and Mac OS X can take full advantage of that work, since they're Unix-like systems. Windows cannot.
Oh really? Is that why there's only been one remote hole in the default install of OpenBSD in more than 10 years?
Sure, software has bugs. That doesn't mean that good programmers can't write software with less bugs. Further, it doesn't mean that they can't write their software in such a way that any bugs are unlikely to be security holes.
It's also possible that Firefox and Opera really *are* more secure than Internet Explorer.
The "attackers go for the biggest target" effect is real, but it's not the whole story. Take webservers for example - Historically, Apache has been more popular than IIS, and yet IIS has had more major security issues. Another good example is Java applets vs. ActiveX controls.
Sure, there are security bugs in all the popular browsers. Realistically, running Firefox on a Unix-derived system (i.e. anything but Windows) is going to be more secure than IE on Windows XP.
The problem is supposed to be slightly more specific than that. The claim is that if you say <input type="image" name="thing" value="stuff">, IE7 won't pass through "thing=stuff" when the form is submitted. That's a feature that does see some use.
I don't actually have a Windows PC with IE7 to test it on. Even if the claim is true, I don't know what the spec says - if the new behavior follows the spec better, it's a good thing. But there's one thing that I'm sure of: If they did change the behavior to not submit a name=value pair for [input type=image] form elements, it's going to break a bunch of websites.
What's really bad practice is globally turning simple words into reserved words / special variables in a language with existing code. This creates a problem that should have been solved long ago with the concepts of namespace and scope. If I declare a variable in my code, that name should refer to *my variable*.
Using a special global "status" variable to refer to something like the status bar is wrong and dumb. If anything there should be a method on some "browser window" object that sets / gets the status bar.
There's a big range between the users who really only need the 600 meg hard disk (who do exist) and the users who are streaming high def video off their raid array (those guys exist too). Your claim that 90% of users fall in the former category doesn't seem to be accurate.
Most computer users I know - and very few of them are early adopter / high end type users - have at least a few audio or video files on their computer. Some of them have iPods and use iTunes, which takes disk space. The kids play video games, which take disk space.
I absolutely agree that there are a large number of users who wouldn't notice the difference between a 60 gig hard disk and a 600 gig disk today. That doesn't mean that 90% of users would be fine with 6 gig drives... in fact, I bet that 90% of users would feel constrained by that.
Here's the thing: There are some basic skills we expect everyone to have: Reading, simple arithmetic, understanding traffic signs, how to buy food at a grocery store. None of these are intuitive, everyone had to learn them. For a normal person with an office job, using a computer GUI comes up just as frequently as those basic skills.
In fact, using a computer GUI comes up more than basic math for many people. It's a basic skill. Using a computer GUI isn't some specialist skill for computer people, it's a basic skill like reading. There's no excuse not to have it.
users are not lazy, they just want to get some work done without needing the equivalent of a Bachelor's in Computer Science to get that work done.
Bullshit, and implied bullshit.
Computers are non-trivial, but the basics necessary to use them effectively aren't really that complicated. You don't need "the equivilent of a Bachelor's in CS" to use them at all, but you do need to understand what both buttons on the mouse are conventionally used for and the fact that pressing the arrow keys frequently does stuff that's helpful. You should even know what the tab key does for forms.
If people aren't willing to learn at least the basics of using a computer GUI, they're lazy bastards.
Comments like this have been stupid since I first heard them in 1993.
Come back with me for a moment to 1998. A four gig hard drive was pretty nice... it could hold a Half Life install and a StarCraft install at the same time. And people said "Who needs a six gig drive? Most people don't, that's for sure."
Here's how this works: High end stuff is adopted by people who want it. That doesn't need to be you. As time passes, the high end becomes the low end and no-one wants a computer without at least a crappy old 40 gigabyte hard disk. If all you really do is surf the web, check email, and write Word Processor documents, I've got a 600 meg hard drive that will work fine for you. The fact is that you want to be able to do other stuff too, and as time progresses that "other stuff" will eventually want a 37.5 terabit hard disk.
Quatar has more IP addresses. In fact, there are more IP addresses available that could be assigned to Quatar if they needed them. The IPv4 address shortage exists, but not on the "a whole country only gets 1 IP" level.
The issue here is that the one ISP in Quatar has decided to implement Internet censorship (which makes them evil bastards) by using only a small number of proxy servers / NAT boxes. When you put an entire country behind a single NAT box, you're going to run into problems - the Internet was largely designed assuming that each computer got its own IP.
Learning only occurs when the learner is interested, which is why Montessori schools in the real world actually manage to produce well-educated people. I'm not sure what you're holding up as a good and functional alternative, but the traditional "do your math exercises" model has a strong negative effect - it teaches people that the topic being forced is not interesting or fun.
Most consultants I know replace Linux servers with windows because they simply can't support it.
What sort of incompetent computer consultant can't support Linux in 2007?
Seriously, this isn't a lisp machine emulator running on Plan 9... it's the most common server OS in the world. I haven't used Windows in years, and I'll give people shit for using it because I'm obnoxious, but that doesn't mean I can't cope if I'm getting paid. Hell... I'd support the Lisp/Plan 9 server too.
So... you're strictly enforcing a homogeneous network. That means that if you get hit by a virus that isn't caught by your anti-virus product... you just lose. Good job.
I was just talking to him about that. He's decided that one isn't enough - he needs at least two more. He's going to make Linux on PS3 his primary development platform.
There's been a glut of 1280x1024 (5:4 gah!) LCD displays at the low end. We're slowly getting over it, and it's now possible to get 1400x1050, 1600x1200, and 1680x1050 LCD displays reasonably cheap. At the high end, we have 2560x1600 LCD monitors - which is about where CRT displays were five years ago.
If people wanted more detail, we should have no problem making a HDTV+ resolution display, but there's no market.
Not only is there a market, but HDTV+ resolution LCD displays are already commonly available. They're not cheap (30", 2560x1600, $2000), but you wouldn't think they would be.
At a constant voltage, you can measure power in amps. This is the same mechanism used to measure distance in time units (i.e. I live 10 minutes from the grocery store).
I've got decent speed data connectivity anywhere there's a Sprint cell network. Cell network Internet connections are more than fast enough for transferring textual data, and once you have a TCP/IP connection you can encrypt stuff all day long.
They will probably last even longer than that because hi-def technology has matured to the point where users couldn't possibly need higher resolution or more pristine sound effects.
Bullshit. There's easily space for another generation worth of quality improvement in video - at least one more generation. Find yourself a 50" 1080p display, and then watch some 1080p content at 2 - 3 feet (17" computer monitor distance). The screen should fill your vision, including most of your peripheral vision - better than a good movie theater. And... you can see the pixels. They're not very big, but they're there and they're obvious.
I'm not saying this is necessary today, but people are already playing video games at higher-than-HDTV resolutions. Saying that there will be no demand for that in 10 years is short sighted at best.
There's nothing morally wrong with downloading the content and watching it. It's *data* - not only that, it's an element of our culture. How could accepting someone's offer to share culture be wrong?
I always *consider* recommending Debian, and then recommend Ubuntu instead. There's really no advantage to desktop Debian over desktop Ubuntu, and with Ubuntu they're 90% less likely to call me and ask stupid questions about getting their wireless network card working... it'll usually just work out of the box.
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Why should anyone have a right to a new domain name just because they have some other domain name?
Just because you have "news.com" or "boobs.net" doesn't mean you own the words "news" or "boobs". If you're going to give favored access to existing domain holders, there's no public advantage whatsoever to adding new TLDs - it doesn't expand the name space, it just takes a bunch of cash from existing companies and gives it to the new registrar.
This claim that security holes are strictly an effect of popularity is blatantly wrong.
It's true that more security holes are exposed in popular software, but some software just has less security holes to be exposed. Building secure unix-like operating systems is a topic that a lot of people have put quite a bit of effort in to - for much longer than Windows has even existed. Both GNU/Linux and Mac OS X can take full advantage of that work, since they're Unix-like systems. Windows cannot.
Oh really? Is that why there's only been one remote hole in the default install of OpenBSD in more than 10 years?
Sure, software has bugs. That doesn't mean that good programmers can't write software with less bugs. Further, it doesn't mean that they can't write their software in such a way that any bugs are unlikely to be security holes.
It's also possible that Firefox and Opera really *are* more secure than Internet Explorer.
The "attackers go for the biggest target" effect is real, but it's not the whole story. Take webservers for example - Historically, Apache has been more popular than IIS, and yet IIS has had more major security issues. Another good example is Java applets vs. ActiveX controls.
Sure, there are security bugs in all the popular browsers. Realistically, running Firefox on a Unix-derived system (i.e. anything but Windows) is going to be more secure than IE on Windows XP.
The problem is supposed to be slightly more specific than that. The claim is that if you say <input type="image" name="thing" value="stuff">, IE7 won't pass through "thing=stuff" when the form is submitted. That's a feature that does see some use.
I don't actually have a Windows PC with IE7 to test it on. Even if the claim is true, I don't know what the spec says - if the new behavior follows the spec better, it's a good thing. But there's one thing that I'm sure of: If they did change the behavior to not submit a name=value pair for [input type=image] form elements, it's going to break a bunch of websites.
What's really bad practice is globally turning simple words into reserved words / special variables in a language with existing code. This creates a problem that should have been solved long ago with the concepts of namespace and scope. If I declare a variable in my code, that name should refer to *my variable*.
Using a special global "status" variable to refer to something like the status bar is wrong and dumb. If anything there should be a method on some "browser window" object that sets / gets the status bar.
That is utterly irrelevant. Having learned something in the past doesn't mean you get a free pass out of learning anything new today.
Recognizing a menu, recognizing what option is selected, and pressing a button are basic skills. This isn't rocket surgery, it's a DVD menu.
Yea, and computerized devices sometimes have menus. Somehow I can't dredge up much sympathy for anyone who can't handle that.
There's a big range between the users who really only need the 600 meg hard disk (who do exist) and the users who are streaming high def video off their raid array (those guys exist too). Your claim that 90% of users fall in the former category doesn't seem to be accurate.
Most computer users I know - and very few of them are early adopter / high end type users - have at least a few audio or video files on their computer. Some of them have iPods and use iTunes, which takes disk space. The kids play video games, which take disk space.
I absolutely agree that there are a large number of users who wouldn't notice the difference between a 60 gig hard disk and a 600 gig disk today. That doesn't mean that 90% of users would be fine with 6 gig drives... in fact, I bet that 90% of users would feel constrained by that.
Here's the thing: There are some basic skills we expect everyone to have: Reading, simple arithmetic, understanding traffic signs, how to buy food at a grocery store. None of these are intuitive, everyone had to learn them. For a normal person with an office job, using a computer GUI comes up just as frequently as those basic skills.
In fact, using a computer GUI comes up more than basic math for many people. It's a basic skill. Using a computer GUI isn't some specialist skill for computer people, it's a basic skill like reading. There's no excuse not to have it.
Bullshit, and implied bullshit.
Computers are non-trivial, but the basics necessary to use them effectively aren't really that complicated. You don't need "the equivilent of a Bachelor's in CS" to use them at all, but you do need to understand what both buttons on the mouse are conventionally used for and the fact that pressing the arrow keys frequently does stuff that's helpful. You should even know what the tab key does for forms.
If people aren't willing to learn at least the basics of using a computer GUI, they're lazy bastards.
They fixed it? That's actually much more than I would have expected from them.
Comments like this have been stupid since I first heard them in 1993.
Come back with me for a moment to 1998. A four gig hard drive was pretty nice... it could hold a Half Life install and a StarCraft install at the same time. And people said "Who needs a six gig drive? Most people don't, that's for sure."
Here's how this works: High end stuff is adopted by people who want it. That doesn't need to be you. As time passes, the high end becomes the low end and no-one wants a computer without at least a crappy old 40 gigabyte hard disk. If all you really do is surf the web, check email, and write Word Processor documents, I've got a 600 meg hard drive that will work fine for you. The fact is that you want to be able to do other stuff too, and as time progresses that "other stuff" will eventually want a 37.5 terabit hard disk.
That's not a consultant. That's a 12 year old kid. Oh wait. You said $50, not $20. I see the difference now.
Quatar has more IP addresses. In fact, there are more IP addresses available that could be assigned to Quatar if they needed them. The IPv4 address shortage exists, but not on the "a whole country only gets 1 IP" level.
The issue here is that the one ISP in Quatar has decided to implement Internet censorship (which makes them evil bastards) by using only a small number of proxy servers / NAT boxes. When you put an entire country behind a single NAT box, you're going to run into problems - the Internet was largely designed assuming that each computer got its own IP.
Learning only occurs when the learner is interested, which is why Montessori schools in the real world actually manage to produce well-educated people. I'm not sure what you're holding up as a good and functional alternative, but the traditional "do your math exercises" model has a strong negative effect - it teaches people that the topic being forced is not interesting or fun.
I'm running Edgy, and the WMP54G 4.1 seems fine. 4.0 was fine too with a different Ralink chipset I think.
What sort of incompetent computer consultant can't support Linux in 2007?
Seriously, this isn't a lisp machine emulator running on Plan 9... it's the most common server OS in the world. I haven't used Windows in years, and I'll give people shit for using it because I'm obnoxious, but that doesn't mean I can't cope if I'm getting paid. Hell... I'd support the Lisp/Plan 9 server too.
So... you're strictly enforcing a homogeneous network. That means that if you get hit by a virus that isn't caught by your anti-virus product... you just lose. Good job.
I was just talking to him about that. He's decided that one isn't enough - he needs at least two more. He's going to make Linux on PS3 his primary development platform.
There's been a glut of 1280x1024 (5:4 gah!) LCD displays at the low end. We're slowly getting over it, and it's now possible to get 1400x1050, 1600x1200, and 1680x1050 LCD displays reasonably cheap. At the high end, we have 2560x1600 LCD monitors - which is about where CRT displays were five years ago.
Not only is there a market, but HDTV+ resolution LCD displays are already commonly available. They're not cheap (30", 2560x1600, $2000), but you wouldn't think they would be.
At a constant voltage, you can measure power in amps. This is the same mechanism used to measure distance in time units (i.e. I live 10 minutes from the grocery store).
I've got decent speed data connectivity anywhere there's a Sprint cell network. Cell network Internet connections are more than fast enough for transferring textual data, and once you have a TCP/IP connection you can encrypt stuff all day long.
Bullshit. There's easily space for another generation worth of quality improvement in video - at least one more generation. Find yourself a 50" 1080p display, and then watch some 1080p content at 2 - 3 feet (17" computer monitor distance). The screen should fill your vision, including most of your peripheral vision - better than a good movie theater. And... you can see the pixels. They're not very big, but they're there and they're obvious.
I'm not saying this is necessary today, but people are already playing video games at higher-than-HDTV resolutions. Saying that there will be no demand for that in 10 years is short sighted at best.
There's nothing morally wrong with downloading the content and watching it. It's *data* - not only that, it's an element of our culture. How could accepting someone's offer to share culture be wrong?
I always *consider* recommending Debian, and then recommend Ubuntu instead. There's really no advantage to desktop Debian over desktop Ubuntu, and with Ubuntu they're 90% less likely to call me and ask stupid questions about getting their wireless network card working... it'll usually just work out of the box.