I believe the thought process runs something along the lines of: "People sure love tablets and smartphones"->"Tablets and smartphones are all (effectively) single-tasking, fullscreen, self-contained apps with none of the advanced functionality of a desktop OS"->"We should do the same things for our desktop OS so people will love it too"
The section that appears to be missing is the "What about all of us poor bastards who use our computers for work, rather than Facebook and might need more than one window open?" I know Windows 8 still has the desktop, but it's clearly intended to be on its way out with Metro as the "future". I for one do not like the idea of future desktops being "app-only".
Microsoft buggered up the start menu in Windows 7 and people complained
Really? I think the Windows 7 Start Menu is a considerable improvement over XP. I'll admit I was sceptical at first, but now I find that whenever I'm stuck on an XP box I really miss it.
I'm sure I'll get used to most of Windows 8's new conventions too, but as it stands I'm still not convinced that they're all a good idea - especially this idea of having to have both Metro and Regular versions of half your programs.
At a guess, the ratio of Installs to Unpatched/Insecure Installs, both of the core WP software and its many, many 3rd party plugins and themes.
A *lot* of sites are either running old versions of software or have plugins/themes with gaping vulnerabilities that are no longer under active development.
But it's not about the intelligence of the politicians, it's about the intelligence of the voters. You can have two dumb candidates, one with good policies and one with bad ones, but that still doesn't mean that the "average Joe" will be able to distinguish between them; then it just comes down to which candidate is the better debater and/or most successful at publicising their message, rather than the merits of the policies.
If they're dumb enough to lock down internet access to the point that it becomes unusable for work purposes whilst still allowing their network to be trivially bridged by 3G dongles then you're already fighting a losing battle. Chances are that the people writing the policy don't have the slighest clue what they're doing but have read some stuff about how the internet is bad and so should be blocked; be glad they don't do things like blocking all Javascript from running, which I've seen in some companies, thus breaking just about every site they don't already block (though arguably that's as much the fault of the websites in question as the security policy).
Depending on their application security policies, if you've got a PC somewhere (friends, home, hosted box) with access to the internet proper, run an SSHd listening on a port you can get outbound on from the university network (if there even are any) and proxy all your traffic through that with a copy of Putty and something like Portable Firefox run off a USB key.
Otherwise, you could try organising students and lecturers against the stupid IT policy, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope of getting anywhere.
The majority of the UK has had access to free OTA digital TV for quite a few years now via Freeview with the Freesat option for those who already have a satellite dish on their house and the coverage has generally been getting better over time, rather than worse.
Yes it's illegal to interfere with GPS but we are not talking about hardened criminals here, what purpose would jamming a GPS network in a range of 200 yards around your vehicle serve ?
Stealing and hiding a car with a GPS-based tracking device in it long enough for you to find and remove said device.
XP SP3 is still supported until June 2014 - Microsoft extended support when it became apparent that nobody was migrating to Vista and they needed time to get them to switch to Windows 7.
That and the fact that every new car seems to be built on the principle that repair costs are no obstacle...
Compared to people repair/replacement costs, yes. Modern cars deform so "badly" in accidents by design in order to absorb as much of the impact energy as possible so that energy isn't absorbed by your bones and squishy bits.
Personally I would rather have to make a car insurance claim than a life insurance one.
How is there any causal relationship between Google buying Motorola Mobility and close-sourcing Android? How would it in any way benefit Google to close-source Android? Even if they did, why would anyone use webOS as a replacement? Finally, how is HP still going with people like this running it?
It doesn't matter what studies you publish regarding climate change, the pro-AGW people will say that it either supports their claims or that the data in the study isn't enough to draw substantive conclusions from. Meanwhile, the anti-AGW folks will say that either the data in the study isn't enough to draw substantive conclusions from or that it supports their claims.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get to sit around trying to work out if a) mankind's effect on the environment is a significant enough contributor to the current climate trend that anything we can reasonably change is going to make any difference and b) if there's any chance in hell that you can get a *room* of random people to agree to noticeably reduce their energy consumption, let alone an entire planet.
All they're really doing is moving the certificate revocation checks from the client to the server; Google updates its own CRL and pushes it to Chrome so that the browser doesn't have to rely on potentially unresponsive 3rd party sites for its checks.
Because otherwise (as I've discovered by switching it on in Seamonkey) about 20% of the time the connection to the CRL/OCSP server fails for whatever reason and so your site won't load, even though there's nothing wrong with its certificate.
Now you might argue that false positives are preferable to ignoring problems, but it does break the user experience pretty badly.
Because the EU Commission can continue to draft and negotiate ACTA for as long as they like, but ultimately they have to put it to the EU Parliament to vote on before it can become law. There are a couple of things they can try if the Parliament rejects it, but those can still be vetoed by a 2/3rds majority of the Parliament and history has shown that they generally don't like it when the Commission tries to do an end-run around them.
Well then I suggest you start circa 1300 (the origins of the "modern" system of English law) and work forward until you reach the present; I suspect you're going to be a very busy man.
It has nothing to do with the integrity of the law, as they say in their statement "which now seems both cruel and absurd" and everything to do with acting in line with established procedure for dealing with posthumous pardons where the person(s) in question were fairly convicted under the laws of the time.
If you were to attempt to restrospectively pardon every person who was convicted under a law that has since been repealed or replaced, you would be doing it as a full time job.
Yes, because a posthumous pardon would sort out his soul.
It is a sensible and consistent approach in the UK justice system that pardons are not issued if the person in question was fairly convicted by the laws of the time. Pardoning him would not undo what was done, he's long dead and unlikely to get better, the government has already apologised for the way he was treated and all this would really do is help to assuage our guilt.
Slashdot Mirror
I believe the thought process runs something along the lines of: "People sure love tablets and smartphones"->"Tablets and smartphones are all (effectively) single-tasking, fullscreen, self-contained apps with none of the advanced functionality of a desktop OS"->"We should do the same things for our desktop OS so people will love it too"
The section that appears to be missing is the "What about all of us poor bastards who use our computers for work, rather than Facebook and might need more than one window open?" I know Windows 8 still has the desktop, but it's clearly intended to be on its way out with Metro as the "future". I for one do not like the idea of future desktops being "app-only".
Well, nobody reads Slashdot for the poorly edited summaries or week-old stories, do they?
Microsoft buggered up the start menu in Windows 7 and people complained
Really? I think the Windows 7 Start Menu is a considerable improvement over XP. I'll admit I was sceptical at first, but now I find that whenever I'm stuck on an XP box I really miss it.
I'm sure I'll get used to most of Windows 8's new conventions too, but as it stands I'm still not convinced that they're all a good idea - especially this idea of having to have both Metro and Regular versions of half your programs.
At a guess, the ratio of Installs to Unpatched/Insecure Installs, both of the core WP software and its many, many 3rd party plugins and themes.
A *lot* of sites are either running old versions of software or have plugins/themes with gaping vulnerabilities that are no longer under active development.
But it's not about the intelligence of the politicians, it's about the intelligence of the voters. You can have two dumb candidates, one with good policies and one with bad ones, but that still doesn't mean that the "average Joe" will be able to distinguish between them; then it just comes down to which candidate is the better debater and/or most successful at publicising their message, rather than the merits of the policies.
And that's working out so well for you at the moment...
Internet != WWW
It's quite possible that they only allow outbound 80/443 from their proxy server and block *all* outbound ports from client machines.
If they're dumb enough to lock down internet access to the point that it becomes unusable for work purposes whilst still allowing their network to be trivially bridged by 3G dongles then you're already fighting a losing battle. Chances are that the people writing the policy don't have the slighest clue what they're doing but have read some stuff about how the internet is bad and so should be blocked; be glad they don't do things like blocking all Javascript from running, which I've seen in some companies, thus breaking just about every site they don't already block (though arguably that's as much the fault of the websites in question as the security policy).
Depending on their application security policies, if you've got a PC somewhere (friends, home, hosted box) with access to the internet proper, run an SSHd listening on a port you can get outbound on from the university network (if there even are any) and proxy all your traffic through that with a copy of Putty and something like Portable Firefox run off a USB key.
Otherwise, you could try organising students and lecturers against the stupid IT policy, but I wouldn't hold out too much hope of getting anywhere.
The majority of the UK has had access to free OTA digital TV for quite a few years now via Freeview with the Freesat option for those who already have a satellite dish on their house and the coverage has generally been getting better over time, rather than worse.
The government doesn't get to see any of the TV licencing money; the BBC isn't government funded, it's publically funded.
Yes it's illegal to interfere with GPS but we are not talking about hardened criminals here, what purpose would jamming a GPS network in a range of 200 yards around your vehicle serve ?
Stealing and hiding a car with a GPS-based tracking device in it long enough for you to find and remove said device.
XP SP3 is still supported until June 2014 - Microsoft extended support when it became apparent that nobody was migrating to Vista and they needed time to get them to switch to Windows 7.
That and the fact that every new car seems to be built on the principle that repair costs are no obstacle...
Compared to people repair/replacement costs, yes. Modern cars deform so "badly" in accidents by design in order to absorb as much of the impact energy as possible so that energy isn't absorbed by your bones and squishy bits.
Personally I would rather have to make a car insurance claim than a life insurance one.
How is there any causal relationship between Google buying Motorola Mobility and close-sourcing Android? How would it in any way benefit Google to close-source Android? Even if they did, why would anyone use webOS as a replacement? Finally, how is HP still going with people like this running it?
Whoosh!
Remind me again how many people have been killed by "crazy jihaddists" taking binary explosives onto aircraft and detonating them...
It doesn't matter what studies you publish regarding climate change, the pro-AGW people will say that it either supports their claims or that the data in the study isn't enough to draw substantive conclusions from. Meanwhile, the anti-AGW folks will say that either the data in the study isn't enough to draw substantive conclusions from or that it supports their claims.
Meanwhile, the rest of us get to sit around trying to work out if a) mankind's effect on the environment is a significant enough contributor to the current climate trend that anything we can reasonably change is going to make any difference and b) if there's any chance in hell that you can get a *room* of random people to agree to noticeably reduce their energy consumption, let alone an entire planet.
All they're really doing is moving the certificate revocation checks from the client to the server; Google updates its own CRL and pushes it to Chrome so that the browser doesn't have to rely on potentially unresponsive 3rd party sites for its checks.
Because otherwise (as I've discovered by switching it on in Seamonkey) about 20% of the time the connection to the CRL/OCSP server fails for whatever reason and so your site won't load, even though there's nothing wrong with its certificate.
Now you might argue that false positives are preferable to ignoring problems, but it does break the user experience pretty badly.
Because the EU Commission can continue to draft and negotiate ACTA for as long as they like, but ultimately they have to put it to the EU Parliament to vote on before it can become law. There are a couple of things they can try if the Parliament rejects it, but those can still be vetoed by a 2/3rds majority of the Parliament and history has shown that they generally don't like it when the Commission tries to do an end-run around them.
Well then I suggest you start circa 1300 (the origins of the "modern" system of English law) and work forward until you reach the present; I suspect you're going to be a very busy man.
It's a lack of belief system.
How is it in any way inconsistent?
It has nothing to do with the integrity of the law, as they say in their statement "which now seems both cruel and absurd" and everything to do with acting in line with established procedure for dealing with posthumous pardons where the person(s) in question were fairly convicted under the laws of the time.
If you were to attempt to restrospectively pardon every person who was convicted under a law that has since been repealed or replaced, you would be doing it as a full time job.
Yes, because a posthumous pardon would sort out his soul.
It is a sensible and consistent approach in the UK justice system that pardons are not issued if the person in question was fairly convicted by the laws of the time. Pardoning him would not undo what was done, he's long dead and unlikely to get better, the government has already apologised for the way he was treated and all this would really do is help to assuage our guilt.