You're in school for christ sake, how about have a class or two about the libre software tools in the 100 level?
The rest of your comment is nonsense. There are plenty of schools that have made the move to libre software already. And they haven't collapsed in upon themselves as you are alluding. As for the mac users, isn't there a port of OpenOffice to that already?
Anyways, bullshit whining. There are libre software choices, you just have to pull your head out of your arse and look around.
There are two types of people, those who bitch that libre software is teh bad, and those who just go out and use it to be productive anyways despite the "current cool factor of raggin on it.'
Not all/.'ers are foaming at the mouth anti-msft zealots. I may hate MSFT, but that doesn't mean I automatically love any competitor. And I suspect many other/.'ers feel the same. For someone with such a low UID, you think you'd get it more.
I realize you're trying to be funny, but it's just really annoying to hear the same bullshit over and over again. Yes, MSFT is pure evil. No, not everyone else is automatically gold.
Always pays to be modest though. I never mock or belittle my former 'peers" when I see them in those roles. Inside I may laugh a bit, but to be honest I think they know how much they fucked up. Plus, never piss off the dude making yer food:-)
Was kinda funny though, in my classes [in the advance stream] I was always the person people felt wouldn't make it, yet I was the one doing international talking engagements and working before even finishing my degree. w00t.
Actually, the best was when I met up with one of the former peers who was always kinda a brainer. I had just got back from a business trip to France, [while still in college]. I asked her what she was studying, "international business." Oh that's nice:-)
Since when do you need a cell phone? And why do you have to give out your number?
Seems if kids just want to avoid needless distractions they shouldn't be carrying pagers, beepers, cellphones and talking on phpbb boards during school. And besides, kids are assholes. It's what they do. Just realize that the "popular" bullies usually end up serving you subway when you're finished your degree.
But I can run OpenOffice TODAY, and it packs more features, TODAY, and it's free software, TODAY, and...
Maybe Google should write a browser in Ajax then run the tools inside the browser inside Ajax inside another browser. Thus forming a singularity that will end all life as we know it and we won't have to sit through ANOTHER boring article from a me-too loser wannabe.
For me, the move to google apps from OpenOffice is a hard one to rationalize. It means I have to store/work on my files on a server that I don't control, only have access when I'm on the web, have less features than I currently have and have to put up with network latency.
That's where OpenOffice comes in. We're inventing technology we just don't need.
Documents should be stored in some sort of version control system (CVS, etc). When you hit the road you check out the revision you need and store it locally. Not exactly hard.
When I travel to give my talks [e.g. toorcon] I usually have 3-4 copies ofthe talk with me. On a CD, on a laptop, on a USB drive, etc. That way if one fails [which has happened] I have another. One year I went there my laptop wasn't all smooth so I had to borrow one, no problem, files on a usb drive, used another laptop and went on my way. Had I been stupid and put the presentation in a single spot [e.g. google] I'd be fucked [also because Toorcon NEVER has net access].
Also you have to think about the needless traffic this generates with minor revisions/etc going over the wire. Think of it like a dumb terminal, but with millions of users from all over the globe. That has to be a lot of traffic.
Some files, re: presentations and the like, need to be portable since if you call a meeting with 20 execs and can't present you get fired. Other things like a DB of credit card numbers shouldn't ever leave the server and wouldn't be something you store in Googles file store anyways.
OpenOffice is free. Use that for your presentations/etc if you're worried about cost.
Nice dis of the US though [for no reason whatsoever]. I should point out that Canada doesn't have voting over the net either. Neither does most of the free world. [and yes, I'm Canadian...]
Not to split hairs, but the pentium ran x86 as well, it differed from the 486 in that it had two integer pipelines. It wasn't until you got to OOE capable processors that RISC was the norm (e.g. P6 and above). Whenever you see "micro" or "macro" operations in the description that's not x86.
Oddly enough, the move is to make more and more x86 instructions single ops again to try and free up pipeline slots. They're still using the CISC to RISC approach in both camps, but the decoding is becoming more 1-1 then anything else.
I work in cryptography mostly. Though I have been in other roles (I was a software engineer for AMD for a while...). Not once have I seen a copy of VB in action.
When I have to mingle with CSV data as the other reply mentioned, I use perl. It's not only easier to use for that purpose than VB, but easier to get access to on my LIBRE Linux distro.
That being said. If Microsoft can do something diffeernt to help out their user base, I think they should.
Remember when DOS used to come with a 300 page manual describing all the commands, their pros/cons, etc?
Typical Windows install media comes with nothing more than an advertisement for another MSFT product (e.g. XP Plus!). Not saying a manual is the solution, since nobody RTFM anymore. But definitely some form of training material would be warranted. They could start with safer defaults too I guess...
Look at where most demos and games come from, some anonymous, ad laden, 3rd party "download site".
I'd trust a game download fetched from idsoftware.com more than gamesgamesgamesgalore.com. If a game requests admin rights to install for my user, that would raise a red flag, etc.
Wow, two simple ideas that didn't involve a masters thesis from MIT.
I disagree, there are a lot of simple small things people could do to protect themselves
1. Learn to recognize spam/phishing 2. Not run attachments 3. Not run random binaries (even things like Party Poker.net) 4. Not read HTML emails 5. Not run as root (that fix takes all of 5 seconds to make)
etc...
You hardly need a degree in comp.sci to sort this out. People are just lazy, and will do whatever they want despite the fact they're their own worst enemy most of the time.
No libre OS can ever defend against every threat vector since doing so requires taking away liberties, such as the ability to develop and run 3rd party software.
I agree that a focus on the basics is more important than computers or tech. (judging by the spelling errors in my post... maybe I should have paid more attention hehehe).
But figure this out, you can do things like English and most sciences, with a computer. Typing up an essay, running numbers through a spreadsheet to get standard deviation, etc. Most uni students I know, have to have crash courses in computers because their professors expect them to use things like Fortran, maple, magma, etc.
Granted, I agree that a lot of things, like math, should be done manually at the early stages. Heck, I was going through elementary during the "calculator debates." (should we have calculators in classes before grade 6?). But once you hit highschool, things like statistics are largely just a manual labour job and not actually a comprehension job. like I know how the standard deviation works, but if you ask me to figure it out for a set of 30 numbers, I'm likely to typo a calculation or two. Getting the wrong result doesn't mean I don't know the technique, it just means the work is not suitable for humans.
The trick that adults give up on, is that children have a capacity to learn that can be untameable compared to adults. Add to the fact that they have all the time in the world to be a student (not like they have jobs or other responsibilities) and it's easy to see how they could pick up technology.
It isn't like computers are going to "go away" nor become any less entrenched in our society. So why not make it a part (but not the whole part) of the student experience?
What I don't get about posts like yours is where this "must have a 6 year masters degree in comp.sci to understand how to use SMTP" comes from.
As a 11 going on 12 year old kid I was setting up nodes for transcanada, fidonet, tattlenet and the like for the BBS that my brother and I ran. We were routing mail from all over north america and even into europe (thank god for cheap long distance plans with upper limits).
If an 11 year old can figure out, on their own, without classes, how to route mail, surely to god a competent adult can figure out how to turn off HTML emails, not run attachments, not run as root all the time. Or are you saying adults are in general very very stupid and shouldn't be trusted?
Your comment about driving is lost on me. Most adults drive fairly poorly. Running stops, speeding, not giving right away, etc. That there aren't more accidents than there currently are is mostly because people are good at avoiding them. It doesn't mean they're driving safe, it just means they know how to react when they're cut off, or pull a turn too quickly, or etc...
People in general just assume the world works for them and that putting any effort into anything is a sign of a weakness. If I have to learn how to use e-mail, it means I'm stupid or something, therefore I'll just pluck at it until I get my first chain letter [and then forward it off to 100 people] then i know I mastered email.
MSFT is not the reason we have personal computers. TRS-80, Vic-20, Apple ][, Mac Lisa, etc... These were all computers that came before, during, after the inception of MSFT. None of which ran Windows (or MS-DOS). Sure, MSFT is a large player in the field, but to say we would not have PCs if it were not for MSFT is a huge stretch.
Why should consumers expect security if they don't know how to use the tools (and yes, an OS is a tool, not an adventure!). If anything, be upset at how apathetic people are towards general knowledge, curiosity, responsibility, and the like.
You can know a thing or two about cars, enough to both drive safely and responsibly without being a mechanic. If your car is running rough, or spouting out blue smoke, chances are you shouldn't be driving it. I couldn't tell you exactly what is wrong, but common sense says, if the car ain't acting like normal, it's worth investigating.
The reason people will run a car until the wheels fall off is because they're wilfully ignorant, apathetic, and lazy. It's not my fault if the tires fall off, it's Ford's for building a car that can't run unmaintained for 23 years.
it's not my fault my box turned into part of a zombie net, and my financial details have all been leaked, it's MSFT for allowing me to run every random binary off the net, for me running them as admin instead of a user, etc, etc, etc.
If the very basics of using a computer such as, not running as admin, or not reading HTML emails with activex turned on is too complicated, maybe you should resort to snail mail and "the price is right" on the TV. At least that won't contribute to the mass of spam that hits my inbox every day.
Well why not have it part of the school curriculum? When I went through school even keyboarding was voluntary. So in effect the majority of my fellow high school grads, knew JACK SQUAT about computers (we're talking circa 2000).
I don't think you can simultaneously pull on the resources of society when you fall victim to fraud, malware, or viruses (e.g. turned into a bot), and then reject learning how the tools work. Why should I pay interest rates, taxes, and other socially collected fees [ISP rates for instance] to cover for people who willing put themselves into harms way?
I never said we should have licenses though, you're putting words into my post (nice AC troll-fu btw). I just think society would be better served if as a whole, people had the first slightest clue about computers.
And it's not like the majority of folk don't want to use computers. So why is making it a mandatory part of the high school [or better yet elementary] curriculum such a bad idea? Of course, I'd love to see such curriculum not focus solely on Windows, maybe through in OS X and a Linux distro for good measure.
User security, is like car safety. It's nice to design for "in case shit happens" but if you drive like a lunatic, you're likely to get hurt.
I think a large part of security involves the self. People don't do enough thinking, and are too lazy to follow simple security procedures. No automated tool or system, that allows some freedoms can protect people entirely. Think about it, the OS'es solution to malware? Only allow MSFT signed binaries to run. But this is horrible as it means only MSFT can authorize binaries and it cuts out 3rd party developers.
At some point the users themselves have to stop and learn how to use their computers properly, if they want to use them. If they're too lazy to figure it out, *and* demand security, they should not use a computer.
Of course it's largely MSFT's fault for breeding a culture of contempt for knowledge. Oh look it's so easy anyone can use it with zero training.
Imagine if MSFT made automobiles (but with the a yolk instead of a wheel/pedals, and other "standard improvements"). No training required!
Slashdot Mirror
You're in school for christ sake, how about have a class or two about the libre software tools in the 100 level?
The rest of your comment is nonsense. There are plenty of schools that have made the move to libre software already. And they haven't collapsed in upon themselves as you are alluding. As for the mac users, isn't there a port of OpenOffice to that already?
Anyways, bullshit whining. There are libre software choices, you just have to pull your head out of your arse and look around.
There are two types of people, those who bitch that libre software is teh bad, and those who just go out and use it to be productive anyways despite the "current cool factor of raggin on it.'
Tom
Dear school guy,
Use Openoffice. It's free. Run it on top of GNU/Linux. It's also free.
Sincerely,
Get a fucking clue.
Shut up.
/.'ers are foaming at the mouth anti-msft zealots. I may hate MSFT, but that doesn't mean I automatically love any competitor. And I suspect many other /.'ers feel the same. For someone with such a low UID, you think you'd get it more.
Not all
I realize you're trying to be funny, but it's just really annoying to hear the same bullshit over and over again. Yes, MSFT is pure evil. No, not everyone else is automatically gold.
Tom
Always pays to be modest though. I never mock or belittle my former 'peers" when I see them in those roles. Inside I may laugh a bit, but to be honest I think they know how much they fucked up. Plus, never piss off the dude making yer food :-)
:-)
Was kinda funny though, in my classes [in the advance stream] I was always the person people felt wouldn't make it, yet I was the one doing international talking engagements and working before even finishing my degree. w00t.
Actually, the best was when I met up with one of the former peers who was always kinda a brainer. I had just got back from a business trip to France, [while still in college]. I asked her what she was studying, "international business." Oh that's nice
Tom
Since when do you need a cell phone? And why do you have to give out your number?
Seems if kids just want to avoid needless distractions they shouldn't be carrying pagers, beepers, cellphones and talking on phpbb boards during school. And besides, kids are assholes. It's what they do. Just realize that the "popular" bullies usually end up serving you subway when you're finished your degree.
AND YES, I WANT IT TOASTED!!!
Tom
Morbo wants more patent suits. Make the whole system collapse in on it's stupidity.
Bonus points since MSFT just threatened to sue Linux users for violating MSFT patents.
mmm karma.
But I can run OpenOffice TODAY, and it packs more features, TODAY, and it's free software, TODAY, and ...
Maybe Google should write a browser in Ajax then run the tools inside the browser inside Ajax inside another browser. Thus forming a singularity that will end all life as we know it and we won't have to sit through ANOTHER boring article from a me-too loser wannabe.
For me, the move to google apps from OpenOffice is a hard one to rationalize. It means I have to store/work on my files on a server that I don't control, only have access when I'm on the web, have less features than I currently have and have to put up with network latency.
Gee, that's JUST SO SMART!
Tom
Anyone remember smartdrv of yesteryear? How about fastopen? :-)
Tom
That's where OpenOffice comes in. We're inventing technology we just don't need.
Documents should be stored in some sort of version control system (CVS, etc). When you hit the road you check out the revision you need and store it locally. Not exactly hard.
When I travel to give my talks [e.g. toorcon] I usually have 3-4 copies ofthe talk with me. On a CD, on a laptop, on a USB drive, etc. That way if one fails [which has happened] I have another. One year I went there my laptop wasn't all smooth so I had to borrow one, no problem, files on a usb drive, used another laptop and went on my way. Had I been stupid and put the presentation in a single spot [e.g. google] I'd be fucked [also because Toorcon NEVER has net access].
Also you have to think about the needless traffic this generates with minor revisions/etc going over the wire. Think of it like a dumb terminal, but with millions of users from all over the globe. That has to be a lot of traffic.
Tom
Some files, re: presentations and the like, need to be portable since if you call a meeting with 20 execs and can't present you get fired. Other things like a DB of credit card numbers shouldn't ever leave the server and wouldn't be something you store in Googles file store anyways.
OpenOffice is free. Use that for your presentations/etc if you're worried about cost.
Tom
Needing to be connected to the web sucks for those who travel.
Or am I the only one to have thought of that?
Tom
is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?
I didn't know they were related...
Nice dis of the US though [for no reason whatsoever]. I should point out that Canada doesn't have voting over the net either. Neither does most of the free world. [and yes, I'm Canadian...]
Tom
Not to split hairs, but the pentium ran x86 as well, it differed from the 486 in that it had two integer pipelines. It wasn't until you got to OOE capable processors that RISC was the norm (e.g. P6 and above). Whenever you see "micro" or "macro" operations in the description that's not x86.
Oddly enough, the move is to make more and more x86 instructions single ops again to try and free up pipeline slots. They're still using the CISC to RISC approach in both camps, but the decoding is becoming more 1-1 then anything else.
Tom
I work in cryptography mostly. Though I have been in other roles (I was a software engineer for AMD for a while...). Not once have I seen a copy of VB in action.
When I have to mingle with CSV data as the other reply mentioned, I use perl. It's not only easier to use for that purpose than VB, but easier to get access to on my LIBRE Linux distro.
Tom
FTA: "according to forrester research, 37 percent of all inhouse development uses VB."
.com shops, but for the rest of us who work for a living, C is pretty much the norm.
Say what? I've never worked in a place where VB was used, let alone the norm.
It may be used in a lot of
LANGUAGE WARS!
That being said. If Microsoft can do something diffeernt to help out their user base, I think they should.
Remember when DOS used to come with a 300 page manual describing all the commands, their pros/cons, etc?
Typical Windows install media comes with nothing more than an advertisement for another MSFT product (e.g. XP Plus!). Not saying a manual is the solution, since nobody RTFM anymore. But definitely some form of training material would be warranted. They could start with safer defaults too I guess...
Tom
Look at where most demos and games come from, some anonymous, ad laden, 3rd party "download site".
I'd trust a game download fetched from idsoftware.com more than gamesgamesgamesgalore.com. If a game requests admin rights to install for my user, that would raise a red flag, etc.
Wow, two simple ideas that didn't involve a masters thesis from MIT.
I must be a genious.
Tom
I disagree, there are a lot of simple small things people could do to protect themselves
1. Learn to recognize spam/phishing
2. Not run attachments
3. Not run random binaries (even things like Party Poker.net)
4. Not read HTML emails
5. Not run as root (that fix takes all of 5 seconds to make)
etc...
You hardly need a degree in comp.sci to sort this out. People are just lazy, and will do whatever they want despite the fact they're their own worst enemy most of the time.
No libre OS can ever defend against every threat vector since doing so requires taking away liberties, such as the ability to develop and run 3rd party software.
Tom
Um, what? My point was that the users have to take responsibilities for their actions. Thank you for arguing my point.
Tom
I agree that a focus on the basics is more important than computers or tech. (judging by the spelling errors in my post ... maybe I should have paid more attention hehehe).
But figure this out, you can do things like English and most sciences, with a computer. Typing up an essay, running numbers through a spreadsheet to get standard deviation, etc. Most uni students I know, have to have crash courses in computers because their professors expect them to use things like Fortran, maple, magma, etc.
Granted, I agree that a lot of things, like math, should be done manually at the early stages. Heck, I was going through elementary during the "calculator debates." (should we have calculators in classes before grade 6?). But once you hit highschool, things like statistics are largely just a manual labour job and not actually a comprehension job. like I know how the standard deviation works, but if you ask me to figure it out for a set of 30 numbers, I'm likely to typo a calculation or two. Getting the wrong result doesn't mean I don't know the technique, it just means the work is not suitable for humans.
The trick that adults give up on, is that children have a capacity to learn that can be untameable compared to adults. Add to the fact that they have all the time in the world to be a student (not like they have jobs or other responsibilities) and it's easy to see how they could pick up technology.
It isn't like computers are going to "go away" nor become any less entrenched in our society. So why not make it a part (but not the whole part) of the student experience?
Tom
What I don't get about posts like yours is where this "must have a 6 year masters degree in comp.sci to understand how to use SMTP" comes from.
As a 11 going on 12 year old kid I was setting up nodes for transcanada, fidonet, tattlenet and the like for the BBS that my brother and I ran. We were routing mail from all over north america and even into europe (thank god for cheap long distance plans with upper limits).
If an 11 year old can figure out, on their own, without classes, how to route mail, surely to god a competent adult can figure out how to turn off HTML emails, not run attachments, not run as root all the time. Or are you saying adults are in general very very stupid and shouldn't be trusted?
Your comment about driving is lost on me. Most adults drive fairly poorly. Running stops, speeding, not giving right away, etc. That there aren't more accidents than there currently are is mostly because people are good at avoiding them. It doesn't mean they're driving safe, it just means they know how to react when they're cut off, or pull a turn too quickly, or etc...
People in general just assume the world works for them and that putting any effort into anything is a sign of a weakness. If I have to learn how to use e-mail, it means I'm stupid or something, therefore I'll just pluck at it until I get my first chain letter [and then forward it off to 100 people] then i know I mastered email.
Tom
Teach me to post when hungry... I of course meant a yoke.
Tom
MSFT is not the reason we have personal computers. TRS-80, Vic-20, Apple ][, Mac Lisa, etc... These were all computers that came before, during, after the inception of MSFT. None of which ran Windows (or MS-DOS). Sure, MSFT is a large player in the field, but to say we would not have PCs if it were not for MSFT is a huge stretch.
Why should consumers expect security if they don't know how to use the tools (and yes, an OS is a tool, not an adventure!). If anything, be upset at how apathetic people are towards general knowledge, curiosity, responsibility, and the like.
You can know a thing or two about cars, enough to both drive safely and responsibly without being a mechanic. If your car is running rough, or spouting out blue smoke, chances are you shouldn't be driving it. I couldn't tell you exactly what is wrong, but common sense says, if the car ain't acting like normal, it's worth investigating.
The reason people will run a car until the wheels fall off is because they're wilfully ignorant, apathetic, and lazy. It's not my fault if the tires fall off, it's Ford's for building a car that can't run unmaintained for 23 years.
it's not my fault my box turned into part of a zombie net, and my financial details have all been leaked, it's MSFT for allowing me to run every random binary off the net, for me running them as admin instead of a user, etc, etc, etc.
If the very basics of using a computer such as, not running as admin, or not reading HTML emails with activex turned on is too complicated, maybe you should resort to snail mail and "the price is right" on the TV. At least that won't contribute to the mass of spam that hits my inbox every day.
Tom
Well why not have it part of the school curriculum? When I went through school even keyboarding was voluntary. So in effect the majority of my fellow high school grads, knew JACK SQUAT about computers (we're talking circa 2000).
I don't think you can simultaneously pull on the resources of society when you fall victim to fraud, malware, or viruses (e.g. turned into a bot), and then reject learning how the tools work. Why should I pay interest rates, taxes, and other socially collected fees [ISP rates for instance] to cover for people who willing put themselves into harms way?
I never said we should have licenses though, you're putting words into my post (nice AC troll-fu btw). I just think society would be better served if as a whole, people had the first slightest clue about computers.
And it's not like the majority of folk don't want to use computers. So why is making it a mandatory part of the high school [or better yet elementary] curriculum such a bad idea? Of course, I'd love to see such curriculum not focus solely on Windows, maybe through in OS X and a Linux distro for good measure.
Tom
can't believe I'm speaking up for Vista but ...
User security, is like car safety. It's nice to design for "in case shit happens" but if you drive like a lunatic, you're likely to get hurt.
I think a large part of security involves the self. People don't do enough thinking, and are too lazy to follow simple security procedures. No automated tool or system, that allows some freedoms can protect people entirely. Think about it, the OS'es solution to malware? Only allow MSFT signed binaries to run. But this is horrible as it means only MSFT can authorize binaries and it cuts out 3rd party developers.
At some point the users themselves have to stop and learn how to use their computers properly, if they want to use them. If they're too lazy to figure it out, *and* demand security, they should not use a computer.
Of course it's largely MSFT's fault for breeding a culture of contempt for knowledge. Oh look it's so easy anyone can use it with zero training.
Imagine if MSFT made automobiles (but with the a yolk instead of a wheel/pedals, and other "standard improvements"). No training required!
Tom