Yes, I believe it to be a bad thing when major news sources lock down their content so it can only be played on one operating system and browser when there is no valid reason to do so.
A third component is the media format and a fourth is the DRM which encumbers the operating system, the browser, the media player and the file format. Those are owned and controlled by a single company with a history of predatory marketing and anti-competitive, monopolistic practices.
So on the surface you have, again, the appearances of using a monopoly in one market (the desktop computer) to gain a monopoly in another (media). That would be illegal and, regardless of legality, it does hurt the free market.
Deeper, you have control of the actual content via DRM. Sure content can be produced by anyone, but those behind the DRM scheme have the last say on what actually plays, and when, where, how, and how often it plays. That's not the same as the creator or distributor deciding, even if they wishes appear at this time to overlap, and is an important difference. In essence it's about a firm step towards controlling all media content.
Of course, Europe's no shining example there either and has delayed the current anti-trust case for a few more months to the benefit of MS... and has replaced the judge hearing the case.
It also works on people who don't read articles on Linux or F/OSS.
So when the press writes of Chairman Bill receiving a poem from a little girl who has memorized his RedBook^H^H^H^H^H^HMSCE exam or pays attention to the smoke and noise generated in this case by Michael Taylor, they can't pay attention to other things. For example, that mainstream sources are starting to acknowledge that the future is open source.
There's probably a good dozen things including but not limited to sw patents, failed security, underperforming sales, etc. that MS would rather not have in front of people.
M$ likes to use "Linux" interchangeably in several different contexts to encourage confusion: the kernel, linux distros, Free and/or Open Source software.
Though I don't doubt that to a certain extent much of M$ staff is confused on the issue, the main goal is to create a distraction which seems to have worked.
Do you really think that the American people will be ready, by 2008, for the succession of the office of President to Jeb Bush? I don't.
No, but Diebold will.;)
Seriously, the election process in the US no longer fulfills the criteria the UN and the US itself have when they go in to other countries to monitor elections. An audit trail (paper or not) is a necessary prerequisite for free and fair elections. Currently, the US can't meet that basic requirement and neither the authenticity nor origin of large numbers of votes can be established. Further, the UN was actually prevented from monitoring the 2004 election.
However, if enough people speak up, say by writing their congress members and their regional newspapers, then maybe there's a chance to get things straightened out in time for the 2008 election.
A more subtle encroachment on rights that's sneaking by right now is control of the media and that concerns your rights by influencing your decisions. Without information, informed decisions are not possible. And, if informed decisions are the corner stone of democracy, then without them democracy is not really possible.
Maybe the "active denial" microwave gun will be used on protesters. It's hard to guess because there has been so damn little coverage of protests. So without it's hard to gauge what's going on elsewhere.
Recently, there were major protests at Spanish universities, including faculty, against sw patents. No coverage.
The other year, there were hundreds if not thousands of protests against the war in Iraq going on around Europe. Many had record turnout. Almost no coverage of them in Europe after the first few, no coverage in the US.
Or take the WTO protests in both Europe and the US. Very, very little coverage. In the US, the coverage only extended to the small number of violent protesters, not the topic of the protest nor the days of peaceful manifestation.
Or take coverage of May Day protests. Very little coverage, if any. One BBC report cover it, but used one sentence to say how peaceful they all were and then used the rest of the report to say how hard it was to track down an unruly protest whilst playing the sounds of violence and breaking glass in the background. That's not news anymore that's spin, almost as good as Faux News or CNN.
Do you remember the upswell of annoyed and terminally confused end-users the last time Microsoft changed all the interfaces for Word[Perfect] or Star Office the last time they upgraded Windows?
You're trolling. But just in case you're not: no, I don't recall that. I'm talking about the interface for MS-Windows changing when MS-Windows is "upgraded". Or application interfaces changing from an "upgrade", when all that was needed was a filter to read a new file format, and so on.
The problem is the design of the MS-Windows systems and applications don't allow that kind of thing. If you have NT 4 and want to drop in the NT 5 (aka MS-Windows 2000) kernel or the NT 5.5 (aka XP) kernel, you can't do that. Likewise if you want to keep the NT 4 kernel and skin it with XP eye candy, you can't do that . Nor can your IT support team patch individual applications or services without affecting the functionality and configuration of many others. Some "patches" have broken more than they've fixed. You don't have those problems in a properly designed, modular system.
Besides all those MS-Windows systems are bought and paid for. Why the f*%^$$# can't people keep using them as they are? They're bought and paid for aren't they? The occasional patch may be needed for specific problems, but a patch should not affect functionality unless some unethical bastard decided to piggyback non-security related stuff into it.
It's about how Linux distros and other F/OSS systems are modular. Sure things are generally the same between different versions of MS-Windows or MS applications, but generally is not the same as exactly the same. Menus getting moved around do bother the basic user. Power users are a different matter, but as indicated in the parent post, they're not who we're talking about.
When non-technical people I have met get moved from one version of MS-Windows to another or to a different version of MS-Office, they do not like it and will bitch about it. They may or may not bitch at work for fear of repercussions (I saw one site where the file sharing stopped working when they went over to MS-Windows from Netware, but everyone was too scared for their jobs/references to speak up and just ran up and down the halls with disks instead), but they do bitch about it.
If people are happy with an application, no need to change how it works. If people, are happy with how an OS is set up, no need to change how it behaves. Same goes if they are not happy with either, but have gotten used to them anyway.
C'mon, you'd bitch too if every so many months the gear layout on your own car changed around based on the whim of your auto dealer. First the shift is on the steering column, then it's on the floor, reverse is on the upper left, next reverse is on the lower right, one day there are five gears instead of four and then back to four again, over the holidays the gear ratios change, etc. You get the idea. Changes? Sure. But the logic of the transmission has changed very little from an end-user standpoint.
Linux distros standardized? Not yet. However, that's not the point of the post. The point was that a stable configuration can be supported for a very, very long time with Linux or other F/OSS systems. People even make fun of Debian for excelling at it. You get the idea no. It's about stability of the user's environment.
With the MS deal having appeared first, I discovered that naturally the school I started working at has a very tight W2k3 infrastructure, based around Active Directory ( not pretty, but it does work when you find out all the undocumented "features" )
Here you have a perfect case study of how not free (libre) standards came back to bite them where it's tender. Proprietary protocols got them locked in. If they had done their network the other way around, say with any server OS running Kerberos + LDAP, then you'd be able to put any combinations Linux or MS-Windows or OS X or BSD into the mix. Open standards will do that for you.
The MS apologists claim that W2k3 servers can be configured to operate using true implementations of both standards. Make them put their money where their mouth is.
Right now they have to hop, sit, bark, roll over, play dead, or drain the budget every time Bill pulls on the leash. Open protocols would avoid that. Doing this up as case study would point the way out or, at worst, help them realize how they painted themselves into that corner.
Lot's of schools have gone back to choosing the software that is best for their needs, rather than blindly buying into Bill's fantasy.
The main problem is that it's not covered by the mainstream media. After all, what's more interesting to a publisher, an article covering something related to a major advertising account holder, or a topic that competes with or irritates said account holder?
Cities and countries that go back to OSS tend to fall off the radar of the mainstream publishers. When was the last time you read about OSS usage in Korea (aside from Old People jokes) or Spain?
If you want a high profile case, then you can look at what's been going on in Oregon, and especially at Riverdale Highschool. Or you can check out these sites:
As you point out, although Linux distros need to be tweaked just like any other system for the end user, the modularity of the distros mean that most changes can be kept from bothering the user. That means the computer stays a familiar tool and doesn't waste staff time on constantly relearning the same class of application.
Many Windows users have got used to the way Windows does things and are too lazy to change to something that requires a bit of brain usage.
"Power users" are a lost cause and will have trouble no matter which platform they're changing from or to. And they'll do their own changes.
But since the thread is talking about basic users the problem is simpler. It's not a matter of users being lazy. It a matter of the changes being unnecessary. And they're not going to do their own changes anyway, that's the job of IT support.
Face it, Win95/NT/2000/XP/2003 all have different interfaces and behaviors. It's not like dropping a new kernel or even an new OS behind KDE or Gnome: on MS-Windows everything changes. When you change from one version of MS-Windows to another, your basic users will be inconvenienced by it and not like it. Ask them in a non-threatening way, you'll find they do not like the changes in the interface, especially when they're using the computer for exactly the same tasks as before. With a linux distro, they can keep the same GUI behavior and menus -- even in many applications -- for years longer and concentrate on their work rather than learning a new interface.
So, I say again, inconvenience from upgrades is unnecessary for the basic user. Most of these basic users have a computer on their desk to write reports, letters or memos, work a spreadsheet, use e-mail, use the WWW, or print something from any of the above. There's no real reason any of that has to change so often, especially the computer's GUI and applications. In fact if the user is happy with the functionality, then same system and applications could be used indefinitely and there should be no reason to do anything other than the occasional security patch. And a patch should not affect functionality unless some unethical bastard decided to piggyback non-security related stuff into it.
That's standard behavior for GPs and specialists in the US from my experience both first hand and through accounts of others.
Snap diagnoses based on fleeting consultations probably also contribute to deaths and missing work
(Not the same as being on sick leave, most in the US have no sick leave. Many that have 'sick leave' lose their holidays first. But all that's a separate argument.) Because of the lack of investigation of the patient, many symptoms are missed including reaction to the treatment. Because symptoms are missed, there follows an incorrect diagnosis and treatment plan. (Assuming the doctor's treatment plan is not overruled by the HMO or insurance company, but that is also a separate argument. I think nearly all of the people in the US I have known for years have had severe and, in some cases, life threatening problems from this drive-by style of treatment. If a more careful examination had been done and a similar follow up, then those particular problems could have been avoided.
Any automated decision tree or expert system or whatever it's called this year can make a very accurate diagnosis when fed a constellation of symptoms present and absent. However, currently only a skilled human being can identify the actual symptoms. But they aren't, because time isn't spent doing so. And that's backwards.
MS hired up a bunch of DC lobbyist years ago and kept them on retainer. I'm not sure how many eventually got used, but the main goal was to keep them out of the hands of the remaining competition leading into the close of the DOJ vs MS case.
MS also hired a lot of Borland's developers and even sent some of them on paid leave for an extended period. Presumably this was to take out or weaken competition from Borland's C compiler which was the main option for MS-Windows users at the time.
1) If it can't connect to a plain vanilla MIT kerberos server, then it's broken.
2) As I said, LDAP is an add-on in that case. The main protocol is a proprietary one.
3) Without auditing the source code there's no way to support the claim that it's a "clean room" implementation. The MS variant could well be a derivative of either MIT or Heimdal kerberos. The MIT license seems to even permit that kind of activity. Past behavior indicates that it is probably a derivative. Heimdal and MIT Kerberos get pretty much constant scrutiny.
However, putting Kerberos on an insecure system defeats the purpose of it and the MS varian can only be installed on MS-Windows. Write back when AD is actually a separate service installable on other platforms and not baked (metastasized?) into the OS like MSIE.
One way to keep specific versions of packages without affecting the rest of the system is to use apt-pinning. That allows you to use packages from one version without actually having to change your entire system to that same version.
Yes, but which of the "Big Three" is currently in the best position to start rolling out light rail? The summary you give of Crawford's districting sound like traditional urban planning (that is in countries which do urban planning) prior to the automobile culture. Until you get one of the big automakers on board, they're going to fight it and we'll keep getting more chaos like Los Angeles and less "mixed-use residential areas, ubiquitous rail transport, and intimate pedestrian-only streets and squares". The latter make for a really pleasant, efficient place to live.
Here, the networks are regulated (to get a frequency), and they aren't allowed more than 5 or 6 minutes per hour
The US used to be close to that before the 80's. Then Reagan set the conditions which made US television what it has become. Just make sure that your country doesn't do to its high quality programming what your old neighbor on the other side of the fells did... They used to have as good or better programming on their national networks until an about face in priorities and goals 5 years ago.
Or, since I'm buying a new computer, I can just use iWork which should be included on the new machine. Or, I suppose I could just use AbiWord or OpenOffice.org.
Neoffice/J is another option. It's a native port of a href="http://www.openoffice.org/">OpenOffice.org so you won't need X. That's eventually in the works for OOo, too, but I'm not sure of the timeline.
Probably most of it, in the consumer poll. Most people don't know much other than the name. That said, the two variants are basically the same except for the storage capacity and manufacturing process.
On the software side, they encompass the same codecs. It'd be nice if the BBC or some consortium of similar institutions could get the proprietary codec off the Blu-Ray spec and put an open standard on there instead. Dirac or Theora could do for video what the web (HTML+HTTP) did for the net.
Last I heard, the audio codec was not selected. That would be a prime use for Vorbis.
Yeah. Dynamic pricing and such.;) Kind of like how if you get a ticket for running an occluded stop sign, you have to photograph of it before you report it. Otherwise the crew will make adjustments long before you can get back with a camera...
But with items where the price is listed on electronic paper, does the agreement on the conditions of the sale take effect when you take the item off the shelf or only once the cashier rings up the items?
No, but it shipped with it turned off by default. You had to go into the
Network Neighborhood properties and Add Protocol and all that jazz to get it
turned on...
That's in line with what I said, that Windows 95 almost shipped without a TCP/IP stack. It's something that I would like to find an authoritative reference for. I vaguely recall that it was a very, very last minute addition made over the protestations of Bill himself If so there wouldn't be time to have it turned on by default or that services bind to it by default. Previously, it was necessary to use a third party stack to access the Internet to use the Web and Gopher.
Heh. I remember MS apologists going on even in 1998 and 1999 about how the whole Internet / WWW was just a passing fad that would soon blow over. Didn't Win95 almost ship without a TCP/IP stack?
At the time though, I though I was a bit slow to catch on myself. Usenet was where everything was happening (For some categories it still is) and I saw Mosaic, but couldn't ever figure out what it was for or even find a working URL. Then some months later, when I did find one, it linked to a handful of sites all linking to each other and containing only a list of the rest of the handful of sites.
What was the break through for me was that it was similar to Hypercard and I could arrange for material to be put up. Towards the end of 1994, I had arranged for the departmental IT staff to make a web accessible space on one of the departmental unix servers. Then I had HTML versions of previously paper-only tutorials to be posted there. No big deal, I thought. It was for a large class with a few hundred students, but the few that use the tutorials will continue to use the paper copies anyway.
Wrong. With a major exam on a Monday, starting Friday afternoon, it became progressively harder to reach the servers for anything, even e-mail. By the time Sunday night rolled around, there was effectively a denial of service going on. I had set up the documents with internal links and pared the diagrams down to one or two KB. However, the browser kept polling the server even for the internal links and reloading everything. That clogged the 2Mb/s network.
That got the attention of the faculty and put WWW on the map, at least for the department. After that, web versions of tutorials were considered essential and an established part of the administration by 1995.
Ok. Here's the help you were looking for: MS has a broken implementation of Kerberos, so it is difficult to get it working as needed in a cross platform environment. The LDAP implementation that AD claims to support is only an add on, AD itself doesn't use LDAP nor do MS-Windows machines that connect to it. They all use an internal proprietary protocol. For normal LDAP you need NDS/eDirectory or plain old OpenLDAP. So far the MIT Kerberos on which AD's non-compliant variant is presumably based has a better track record than AD's variant. So does Heimdal Kerberos.
So if you're going to run some sort of ID management for a Windows environment, the best choice is probably to put LDAP/Kerberos on an OpenBSD box. If off-the-shelf stuff is a must, then eDirectory is where the proven track record is.
I agree. It's always the *next* version, upgrade, or patch for Windows that's the panacea. After that everything will work as advertised. Until then we just have to cough up enough money / hang on / maintain status quo / install a spare copy / etc. Shoot, we've been hearing about WinFS for what, ten or eleven years? It was supposed to be in Win95.
One of the really tragic points is that although NDS and eDirectory were already ahead of what MS-Active Directory (AD) is now *ten* years ago. AD is suddenly what all the MS fanbois talk about to the exclusion of the more mature, secure, flexible, and compatible options like either eDirectory or plain ol' Kerberos + LDAP.
Actually, most AD articles don't cover many facts or even how to operate in a multi-platform environment. Plus there are a lot of short comings *still* in AD like scalability, performance and interoperability with non-MS systems. These are problems that you don't get with eDirectory or plain LDAP/Kerberos.
I'm sure part of it can be explained by the fanboi mentality where anything and everything from Redmond is great, especially the next version which is just over the horizon, etc. And that MS "valued" partners are more or less forbidden from looking at competing technology. Maybe other parts can be explained by MS' standard marketing methods, like the smear campaign against Novell.
I guess more of it makes sense if one looks at MS like a marketing company, as other posters have pointed out, rather than a software company. Though to me that's a bit 90's. MS is now heavily into lobbying and is bordering more on a political movement than a technology. Talk of AD is then a way of signaling membership in the movement/ideology. That would be another way of explaining fanbois who ignore LDAP+Kerberos or products like eDirectory, not even doing shoot outs against these competitors. doesn't make sense.
I miss the days the product comparisons actually compared useful tools and brought up the good and bad points of the ones examined rather than going over pre-approved 'talking points' I guess even Consumer Reports is no longer unaffected.
I don't care, I'm still free, You can't take the sky from me.
Yes they can and they have. Light pollution can blot out all but the moon and occasionally Venus. At the minimum, light intended for use on the ground, but used to blot out the stars is waste of money and resources.
Why is it ok for linux to include everything but the kitchen sink (and beta drivers for that too), but microsoft is evil if it includes a web browser?
I'm assuming that's a rhetorical question but will answer it below anyway. Otherwise, I'd rant: Why, in 2005 already, do comments like the parent still get modded up? Is team99 still going in one incarnation or other, or are people really that clueless?
The answer to the question, "why Microsoft is considered evil if it includes a web browser", is because used that bundling to illegally leverage its desktop monopoly to break into the browser market.
Just search on for the case The United States of America versus Microsoft Corporation. You'll get way more than just MS vs Netscape.
That's also why most people consider Microsoft's "Linux Lab" to be some sort of sham, based purely on the company's record of past behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Deeper, you have control of the actual content via DRM. Sure content can be produced by anyone, but those behind the DRM scheme have the last say on what actually plays, and when, where, how, and how often it plays. That's not the same as the creator or distributor deciding, even if they wishes appear at this time to overlap, and is an important difference. In essence it's about a firm step towards controlling all media content.
Of course, Europe's no shining example there either and has delayed the current anti-trust case for a few more months to the benefit of MS ... and has replaced the judge hearing the case.
So when the press writes of Chairman Bill receiving a poem from a little girl who has memorized his RedBook^H^H^H^H^H^HMSCE exam or pays attention to the smoke and noise generated in this case by Michael Taylor, they can't pay attention to other things. For example, that mainstream sources are starting to acknowledge that the future is open source. There's probably a good dozen things including but not limited to sw patents, failed security, underperforming sales, etc. that MS would rather not have in front of people.
the kernel, linux distros, Free and/or Open Source software.
Though I don't doubt that to a certain extent much of M$ staff is confused on the issue, the main goal is to create a distraction which seems to have worked.
Seriously, the election process in the US no longer fulfills the criteria the UN and the US itself have when they go in to other countries to monitor elections. An audit trail (paper or not) is a necessary prerequisite for free and fair elections. Currently, the US can't meet that basic requirement and neither the authenticity nor origin of large numbers of votes can be established. Further, the UN was actually prevented from monitoring the 2004 election.
However, if enough people speak up, say by writing their congress members and their regional newspapers, then maybe there's a chance to get things straightened out in time for the 2008 election.
Maybe the "active denial" microwave gun will be used on protesters. It's hard to guess because there has been so damn little coverage of protests. So without it's hard to gauge what's going on elsewhere.
Recently, there were major protests at Spanish universities, including faculty, against sw patents. No coverage.
The other year, there were hundreds if not thousands of protests against the war in Iraq going on around Europe. Many had record turnout. Almost no coverage of them in Europe after the first few, no coverage in the US.
Or take the WTO protests in both Europe and the US. Very, very little coverage. In the US, the coverage only extended to the small number of violent protesters, not the topic of the protest nor the days of peaceful manifestation.
Or take coverage of May Day protests. Very little coverage, if any. One BBC report cover it, but used one sentence to say how peaceful they all were and then used the rest of the report to say how hard it was to track down an unruly protest whilst playing the sounds of violence and breaking glass in the background. That's not news anymore that's spin, almost as good as Faux News or CNN.
The problem is the design of the MS-Windows systems and applications don't allow that kind of thing. If you have NT 4 and want to drop in the NT 5 (aka MS-Windows 2000) kernel or the NT 5.5 (aka XP) kernel, you can't do that. Likewise if you want to keep the NT 4 kernel and skin it with XP eye candy, you can't do that . Nor can your IT support team patch individual applications or services without affecting the functionality and configuration of many others. Some "patches" have broken more than they've fixed. You don't have those problems in a properly designed, modular system.
Besides all those MS-Windows systems are bought and paid for. Why the f*%^$$# can't people keep using them as they are? They're bought and paid for aren't they? The occasional patch may be needed for specific problems, but a patch should not affect functionality unless some unethical bastard decided to piggyback non-security related stuff into it.
It's about how Linux distros and other F/OSS systems are modular. Sure things are generally the same between different versions of MS-Windows or MS applications, but generally is not the same as exactly the same. Menus getting moved around do bother the basic user. Power users are a different matter, but as indicated in the parent post, they're not who we're talking about.
When non-technical people I have met get moved from one version of MS-Windows to another or to a different version of MS-Office, they do not like it and will bitch about it. They may or may not bitch at work for fear of repercussions (I saw one site where the file sharing stopped working when they went over to MS-Windows from Netware, but everyone was too scared for their jobs /references to speak up and just ran up and down the halls with disks instead), but they do bitch about it.
If people are happy with an application, no need to change how it works. If people, are happy with how an OS is set up, no need to change how it behaves. Same goes if they are not happy with either, but have gotten used to them anyway.
C'mon, you'd bitch too if every so many months the gear layout on your own car changed around based on the whim of your auto dealer. First the shift is on the steering column, then it's on the floor, reverse is on the upper left, next reverse is on the lower right, one day there are five gears instead of four and then back to four again, over the holidays the gear ratios change, etc. You get the idea. Changes? Sure. But the logic of the transmission has changed very little from an end-user standpoint.
Linux distros standardized? Not yet. However, that's not the point of the post. The point was that a stable configuration can be supported for a very, very long time with Linux or other F/OSS systems. People even make fun of Debian for excelling at it. You get the idea no. It's about stability of the user's environment.
The MS apologists claim that W2k3 servers can be configured to operate using true implementations of both standards. Make them put their money where their mouth is.
Right now they have to hop, sit, bark, roll over, play dead, or drain the budget every time Bill pulls on the leash. Open protocols would avoid that. Doing this up as case study would point the way out or, at worst, help them realize how they painted themselves into that corner.
The main problem is that it's not covered by the mainstream media. After all, what's more interesting to a publisher, an article covering something related to a major advertising account holder, or a topic that competes with or irritates said account holder? Cities and countries that go back to OSS tend to fall off the radar of the mainstream publishers. When was the last time you read about OSS usage in Korea (aside from Old People jokes) or Spain?
If you want a high profile case, then you can look at what's been going on in Oregon, and especially at Riverdale Highschool. Or you can check out these sites:
- K12 Linux
- LTSP
- Schoolforge
- Skolelinux
There is some mention of the schools and school districts which use or contribute to Free and Open Source.But since the thread is talking about basic users the problem is simpler. It's not a matter of users being lazy. It a matter of the changes being unnecessary. And they're not going to do their own changes anyway, that's the job of IT support.
Face it, Win95/NT/2000/XP/2003 all have different interfaces and behaviors. It's not like dropping a new kernel or even an new OS behind KDE or Gnome: on MS-Windows everything changes. When you change from one version of MS-Windows to another, your basic users will be inconvenienced by it and not like it. Ask them in a non-threatening way, you'll find they do not like the changes in the interface, especially when they're using the computer for exactly the same tasks as before. With a linux distro, they can keep the same GUI behavior and menus -- even in many applications -- for years longer and concentrate on their work rather than learning a new interface.
So, I say again, inconvenience from upgrades is unnecessary for the basic user. Most of these basic users have a computer on their desk to write reports, letters or memos, work a spreadsheet, use e-mail, use the WWW, or print something from any of the above. There's no real reason any of that has to change so often, especially the computer's GUI and applications. In fact if the user is happy with the functionality, then same system and applications could be used indefinitely and there should be no reason to do anything other than the occasional security patch. And a patch should not affect functionality unless some unethical bastard decided to piggyback non-security related stuff into it.
Snap diagnoses based on fleeting consultations probably also contribute to deaths and missing work (Not the same as being on sick leave, most in the US have no sick leave. Many that have 'sick leave' lose their holidays first. But all that's a separate argument.) Because of the lack of investigation of the patient, many symptoms are missed including reaction to the treatment. Because symptoms are missed, there follows an incorrect diagnosis and treatment plan. (Assuming the doctor's treatment plan is not overruled by the HMO or insurance company, but that is also a separate argument. I think nearly all of the people in the US I have known for years have had severe and, in some cases, life threatening problems from this drive-by style of treatment. If a more careful examination had been done and a similar follow up, then those particular problems could have been avoided.
Any automated decision tree or expert system or whatever it's called this year can make a very accurate diagnosis when fed a constellation of symptoms present and absent. However, currently only a skilled human being can identify the actual symptoms. But they aren't, because time isn't spent doing so. And that's backwards.
MS also hired a lot of Borland's developers and even sent some of them on paid leave for an extended period. Presumably this was to take out or weaken competition from Borland's C compiler which was the main option for MS-Windows users at the time.
2) As I said, LDAP is an add-on in that case. The main protocol is a proprietary one.
3) Without auditing the source code there's no way to support the claim that it's a "clean room" implementation. The MS variant could well be a derivative of either MIT or Heimdal kerberos. The MIT license seems to even permit that kind of activity. Past behavior indicates that it is probably a derivative. Heimdal and MIT Kerberos get pretty much constant scrutiny.
However, putting Kerberos on an insecure system defeats the purpose of it and the MS varian can only be installed on MS-Windows. Write back when AD is actually a separate service installable on other platforms and not baked (metastasized?) into the OS like MSIE.
One way to keep specific versions of packages without affecting the rest of the system is to use apt-pinning. That allows you to use packages from one version without actually having to change your entire system to that same version.
Yes, but which of the "Big Three" is currently in the best position to start rolling out light rail? The summary you give of Crawford's districting sound like traditional urban planning (that is in countries which do urban planning) prior to the automobile culture. Until you get one of the big automakers on board, they're going to fight it and we'll keep getting more chaos like Los Angeles and less "mixed-use residential areas, ubiquitous rail transport, and intimate pedestrian-only streets and squares". The latter make for a really pleasant, efficient place to live.
On the software side, they encompass the same codecs. It'd be nice if the BBC or some consortium of similar institutions could get the proprietary codec off the Blu-Ray spec and put an open standard on there instead. Dirac or Theora could do for video what the web (HTML+HTTP) did for the net.
Last I heard, the audio codec was not selected. That would be a prime use for Vorbis.
Yeah. Dynamic pricing and such. ;) Kind of like how if you get a ticket for running an occluded stop sign, you have to photograph of it before you report it. Otherwise the crew will make adjustments long before you can get back with a camera...
But with items where the price is listed on electronic paper, does the agreement on the conditions of the sale take effect when you take the item off the shelf or only once the cashier rings up the items?
At the time though, I though I was a bit slow to catch on myself. Usenet was where everything was happening (For some categories it still is) and I saw Mosaic, but couldn't ever figure out what it was for or even find a working URL. Then some months later, when I did find one, it linked to a handful of sites all linking to each other and containing only a list of the rest of the handful of sites.
What was the break through for me was that it was similar to Hypercard and I could arrange for material to be put up. Towards the end of 1994, I had arranged for the departmental IT staff to make a web accessible space on one of the departmental unix servers. Then I had HTML versions of previously paper-only tutorials to be posted there. No big deal, I thought. It was for a large class with a few hundred students, but the few that use the tutorials will continue to use the paper copies anyway.
Wrong. With a major exam on a Monday, starting Friday afternoon, it became progressively harder to reach the servers for anything, even e-mail. By the time Sunday night rolled around, there was effectively a denial of service going on. I had set up the documents with internal links and pared the diagrams down to one or two KB. However, the browser kept polling the server even for the internal links and reloading everything. That clogged the 2Mb/s network.
That got the attention of the faculty and put WWW on the map, at least for the department. After that, web versions of tutorials were considered essential and an established part of the administration by 1995.
So if you're going to run some sort of ID management for a Windows environment, the best choice is probably to put LDAP/Kerberos on an OpenBSD box. If off-the-shelf stuff is a must, then eDirectory is where the proven track record is.
One of the really tragic points is that although NDS and eDirectory were already ahead of what MS-Active Directory (AD) is now *ten* years ago. AD is suddenly what all the MS fanbois talk about to the exclusion of the more mature, secure, flexible, and compatible options like either eDirectory or plain ol' Kerberos + LDAP.
Actually, most AD articles don't cover many facts or even how to operate in a multi-platform environment. Plus there are a lot of short comings *still* in AD like scalability, performance and interoperability with non-MS systems. These are problems that you don't get with eDirectory or plain LDAP/Kerberos.
I'm sure part of it can be explained by the fanboi mentality where anything and everything from Redmond is great, especially the next version which is just over the horizon, etc. And that MS "valued" partners are more or less forbidden from looking at competing technology. Maybe other parts can be explained by MS' standard marketing methods, like the smear campaign against Novell.
I guess more of it makes sense if one looks at MS like a marketing company, as other posters have pointed out, rather than a software company. Though to me that's a bit 90's. MS is now heavily into lobbying and is bordering more on a political movement than a technology. Talk of AD is then a way of signaling membership in the movement/ideology. That would be another way of explaining fanbois who ignore LDAP+Kerberos or products like eDirectory, not even doing shoot outs against these competitors. doesn't make sense.
I miss the days the product comparisons actually compared useful tools and brought up the good and bad points of the ones examined rather than going over pre-approved 'talking points' I guess even Consumer Reports is no longer unaffected.
Yes they can and they have. Light pollution can blot out all but the moon and occasionally Venus. At the minimum, light intended for use on the ground, but used to blot out the stars is waste of money and resources.
You can, however, take it back. See the International Dark Sky Association for more options.
The answer to the question, "why Microsoft is considered evil if it includes a web browser", is because used that bundling to illegally leverage its desktop monopoly to break into the browser market. Just search on for the case The United States of America versus Microsoft Corporation. You'll get way more than just MS vs Netscape.
That's also why most people consider Microsoft's "Linux Lab" to be some sort of sham, based purely on the company's record of past behavior.