I will grant this validity in almost all cases, however I don't see this argument holding up against Microsoft. If they bundle Internet Explorer...you can still use Netscape. If they bundle Microsoft Chat...you can still use Aol Instant Messenger. If they bundle Wordpad...you can still use your own Office editor.
It's interesting that you said office with a capital "O". In this day and age, Office with a capital "O" means Microsoft Office, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and guess you meant StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.
...And while it's true I could use StarOffice, since MS switches data file formats once monthly my friends using recent versions of MS Office won't be able to see the documents I send them. This means that in order to send data to these lost souls I have to fire up MS Office, copy and paste my text, clean up the formatting, and send it over like that. This is a great example of leveraging their monopoly through arbitrary changes to file formats. They've effectively made it a huge risk to even attempt using a competing product.
Also, MS has built quirks into IE so that pages that look great on Internet Explorer render horribbly or lose critical functionality on Netscape/Mozilla/Opera and others. Since IE has a vast majority of the browser market, cash and time strapped developers must choose who to alienate: IE users who represent a huge majority or all others who are the vast minoruty.
So even though you "can" use other browsers, the experience is diminished, and if you want these features, you're required to fire up IE.
Microsoft officials also have warned they wouldn't accept any broad prohibitions against bundling new features into Windows.
Apparently I did misquote them. Even with the word "broad" in there, my question is still valid: How does the criminal get to negotiate his punishment?
Also, I have no objection to them improving their operating system, but please tell me what about Windows XP is an improvement over, say, Windows 2000?
Is it the new Media Software that, oh by the way, just happens to cripple files that don't come in Microsoft proprietary format? Or perhaps its the endless prodding to join MS Passport? When Microsoft has all your personal information on file, let me know...
Or are you just one of those Microsoft sympathizers who hypocritically refuses to join Passport? After all, it's such a huge improvement...
The term improvement implies that the new is easier, better, and/or faster than the old. What's easier,better, or faster about having to translate all my MP3 audio into WMA for it to sound good? What's easier about being constantly prodded to join Passport? What's better about businesses being forced to expand their IT budgets by (average) 20% annually? What's better about Microsoft getting a cut of every transaction on the internet (through royalty based web standards?)
I think the answer is clearly that nothing about any of those scenarios is better than what we're doing now. In fact, the only people who benefit from the monopoly and the continued leveraging of said monopoly that Windows XP allows are Microsoft and its investors.
PS. I've had the hotmail address since before Microsoft owned it, and I use a Mac. Blow me.
My first reaction to the remedies in the story: The least that could have happened was some sort of prohibition against any future leveraging with Windows. Way too light. These remedies don't even qualify as a slap on the wrist.
Microsoft's comments that they "wouldn't accept any prohibitions against bundling new features into windows" seem to indicate that they will continue their predatory business practices in the future.
The feds are really bending over and mooing on this one, cash whores that they are. Look on the bright side, though: They could've offerred to pay MS' lawyers fees too.
This is the reason so many cable ISP providers insist you have them install the modem for Windows and won't tell you the numbers so you can install it yourself for something other than Windows.
You could install it on your cruddy windows box, then use winipcfg OR ipconfig/all to get your TCP/IP stuff.
As far as I know, a DHCP discover from a Linux box is the same as a mac and a windows box...
The home PC market is predominantly a first-world thing. That market is saturated and there is no killer app requiring 3GHZ monsters.
[SARCASM]
REDMOND, WA--Microsoft has announced that it's followup to Windows XP will have every program ever written bundled into the OS, all starting automatically on boot-up, (including every lame computer class "Hello World!" prog.) and stream enough un-solicited pr0n ads to your kids to choke a horse.
"We feel these new functions will make Windows the OS of the next Millenium!" said an excited Bill Gates from his suburban Seattle office complex.
"I've already placed an order for ANOTHER new Bentley!"
Bill then went on to explain the new Goat Porn Download Accelerator (or GPDA), auto-matic Terrorist repelling prog (or NoSAMA) and several other new "features"...
(stability issues were all but eliminated with Win2K).
My biggest gripe is that some apps are compatible with Win2k one day and not the next. Example? Tom Clancy's "Rogue Spear" and "Covert Ops".
Both games worked on Win2k Pro when I installed it, first with the eval version, then the full version I bought. This was caused by one of two things:
1) I upgraded my hard disks to dynamic so I could build a stripe for my MP3s.
2) I installed Service Packs 1 & 2.
I'm leaning towards number two, because immediately after installing SP1, Rogue Spear stopped working. After SP2, Covert Ops started giving me an unrecoverable error.
This ins't a case where the government or your employer wants to search your home, or spot check you as you are walking down the street in public. You have the option of not working there. You even have an option of not bringing those personal items with you to work.
You either failed 8th Grade Civics or don't live in the United States.
Two points: No employer has any business searching my home for any reason. Period.
Second: The government does NOT have the automatic right to "spot check you as you are walking down the street".
Arbitrary "spot checks" are unconstitutional. If the officer has reason to believe a crime is being committed he can question you hoping to find "probably cause" to search your person. Of course, if he arrests you on the basis of the conversation, he can automatically search you (for "his safety") for weapons before putting you in the police car.
It's a fine distinction, but it is completely untrue that the government (or anybody, for that matter) has the right to "spot check" anybody on the street.
...they won't crack them. They'll store them and if they think you're a suspect kindly ask you to stop using encrypted messaging followed by a supena (polite request) for your encryption keys.
...And if it's really a criminal they will simply destroy their key rather than comply with the subpeona.
Unless you want to increase the penalty for contempt of court to death, this is still a direct move to monitor the private communications of law-abiding citizens in the U.S. Scary.
I have friends who are planning on leaving the country permanently because of proposals like this. The least alarmist of them plans on living in Switzerland until he can legally get dual-citizenship... Who says bin Laden hasn't destroyed America? America as we know it, anyway...
As the story says, IIS is used for administering these servers, so they are indeed in a very vulnerable position and need to be patched.
If you are stuck in this unfortunate arrangement (having to run a customized version of Windows is a bigger nightmare than having to run regular strength windows) this is my recommendation:
Uninstall IIS, FTP, and SMTP services. (Your call if this is a best practice in every circumstance...:)
First, there is no legit use for Datacenter server other than SQL Server. Any DB large enough to warrant Datacenter could not be adequately administered using IIS. Second, rule #1 of SQL server is NEVER EVER RUN IIS ON YOUR SQL SERVER. If you break this rule, you do so at your own peril even without Code Red, Nimda, and whatever next week's major compromise is.
According to the MCT/Drone that taught us at my office, Datacenter can be modified to handle up to 64 processors based on hardware.
Essentially, we were told 99.999% of Windows business operations would never have any realistic need for Datacenter. This was designed for the poor bastard who has to run a site like E-Bay on windows/IIS.
[SARCASM]Or handle a national ID card DB...[/SARCASM]
With all of this said, if you're doing something that requires this much horsepower (64 GB of RAM and 32+ processors?) you should be running linux. I mean, how much of your horsepower on this type of machine is wasted by Windows just to handle the SMP?
in the interest of world security? No. In the interests of Western security? Yes.
Is Turkey in the west? What about India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, or Israel? (Or do you think the "jews should all die?") All of these places (including our allies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) are within striking distance of Saddam's chemical/biological arsenal. Never mind the people in his own country who he has already struck with various plagues.
In reality, Saddam's stock pile might not represent any threat to us. Without the ability to deliver it en masse to the US, it's not a real threat to us. I mean, SCUDs won't cross the Atlantic. Anybody within striking distance that doesn't share Saddam and bin Laden's radical view of Islam lives in fear of the day that he uses it.
Of course no-one can say for sure whether this would solve the problem, but a willingness to negotiate is essential in resolving conflict in a non-violent manner.
A concept which America has shown itself incapable of grasping.
So was the WTC attack a "request for negotiations"? Perhaps when the Taliban kidnapped American citizens who were working with the UN relief effort and "put them on trial" this was an attempt to negotiate with us. Maybe when our Beirut embassy blew up, that was an effort at a breakthrough! It's clear now we've been interpreting these people all wrong for some time now.
Here's something to think about: the Taliban are skinning men alive with hunting knives in villages they conquer in their war with the Northern Alliance. They are systematically slaughtering civillians everywhere they go, systematically raping and murdering women and children everywhere they go.
What about this requires negotiation? Here's the deal amigo: If this group doesn't get stomped down right now, it will only get worse. If we gave-in to their every demand, and were out of everywhere and we told Israel they were on their own and all that, they'd still find something to blow up buildings over.
People like this are living anachronisms, belonging as much in our contemporary, civilized, non-Mass Murdering society as Stephen Spielberg's Velociraptor .
Soon, men like bin Laden and Hussein will join other dinosaurs in extinction.
What's really screwed up about the entertainment industry is that they freaked out about the potential writer's strike last year and went into high gear producing every script in sight.
End result? A gut wrenchingly bad lineup at the local megaplex that includes movies like Legally Blonde and Corky Romano.
Could somebody please revoke Lorne Michaels license to make a movie please?
America is bombing a nation that has supported terrorism against America. It does this after imposing sanctions against a country allied to that nation, sanctions that are causing slow death as millions starve. This act forms part of the motive for the terrorism against America. In bombing Afganistan, America is
inflicting further civilian casualties.
Two things:
1) Any civillians who die in Afghanistan or Iraq were killed by their government's irresponsible refusal to act in the interest of world security. If Iraqi children are dying, perhaps the radicals should take the direct route to ending the sanctions and encourage/force Saddam to allow UN Weapons Inspectors into the country.
2) Anybody who thinks 6,000 intentional murders and a couple hundred accidental deaths are morally equivalent acts is out of their mind.
3) Perhaps, instead of having sanctions and bombing raids we should just allow our buildings to be destroyed, or citizens murdered, our troops gassed, and our allies invaded.
I wonder what happened to make them change their minds. Corporations aren't usually known for doing the right thing simply because it's, well, the right thing.
Interesting.
Indeed.
In this situation "THE RIGHT THING" and what would provide them with the best competitive advantage happily coincided. After all, MS is several years into developing royalty technology. Do HP and Apple really want to compete in a royalty environment with MS having a headstart on development?
I think they thought about it and realized that they would only be feeding the beast by supporting royalty based standards. After all, MS has the most to gain from this. It's a simple mob tactic.
After all, MS is taxing the OEM hardware/software, software vendor, business software and business OS/hardware markets. The next logical step in their racket is to try and get a stranglehold on the internet.
Simple mob tactic. Identify opportunity. Enter market. Destroy competition, tax everybody you do business with, and make sure to box competitors out of the market, one way or the other.
It seems like a lot of people in situations like this (like this "Mike Davis" character) use evidence of the current system's incompetence as proof that "we need a bigger bueracracy."
"Right now, if you have an outstanding parking ticket, you can't get your license renewed. But if you have a murder warrant out on you, you still get your license renewed," said Mike Davis, spokesman for the Baltimore County Executive Office.
This is a good argument for searching the criminal warrants DB when you run a license, then calling the police. A much simpler (and cheaper) solution that giving Oracle $5 billion and saying "make it work".
Perhaps I'm being too logical here, but it seems a system of national identity cards would do a lot more good than harm.
As for the counterfeiting option, one would hope that Sun, Oracle and the feds could between them come up with a card that could not be easily counterfeited, and that could be updated remotely as security breaches were identified.
Assuming it was connected to an "active" system (ie cards can be validated / invalidated by a central server so that duplicates and/or invalid cards would be ferreted out quickly
It's a good fantasy, but here are the problems (the biggest three that come to mind):
1) Price. The "ID Card" you're describing sounds more like a PDA with wireless networking than an inanimate piece of plastic. How much will that cost to develop/deliver?
2) Network. What wireless network will these cards use to be "validated/invalidated by a central server"? As far as I know, there isn't a nationwide (covering everywhere people live and work) wireless network that could provide this service.
3) Ineffective. This system is only useful against people who are using their own identity to get ID. Anybody who (gasp!) uses false documents to get one is undetectable until after the fact. This alone makes this entire system completely useless.
Nope. Not a good idea in the least. Maybe in Candyland, but not here.
OK, they did it stupid before and fixed it two years ago. Is this a big enough deal that you want a patch for older versions? Or is there some seven year sunset for complaints and were not there yet so bitching's still OK?
Anyway, I can think of several far worse UI bugs that were in pre-2000 versions of Explorer.
The point of the column was that the vast majority of Windows users do not have such "easy access" to file type assignments. Yeah, Win2k puts this function in a slightly less obscure place, but again, as of today, since most machines are still running win95/98/nt, so the vast majority of people currently using Windows will not be able to change the file type assignments without help.
Also, I'd like to dispute the notion that anything involving a "right-click" is "simplified to the point that anybody can do it." Most Windows users don't have a clue what a "right-click" is or what the right button on their mouse really does.
The simple truth is that the same vast majority of users who couldn't figure out how to change file-type assignments in Win98 probably still won't be able to in Win2000.
Expecting these same people who can't find the dialog to be able to do it now just because they moved the function to a slightly less obscure place (that they also don't know how to find/user) is just ludicrous.
Despite what Microsoft would have you believe, Win2k is not a majority of PC users. It's not even most of them. All those people running win95/98/NT have been getting screwed for years.
Saying it's "fixed in 2000" is a copout way of saying "We did it really stupid before."
No, but I will equate pot with coffee. (It's a better analogy anyways since over half the people arrested for "Drug" offenses are arrested for weed.)
The simple truth is that simple regular coffee is more harmful than weed.
The LD 50 for caffeine (amount that would kill 50% of individuals in a test group) is 10g delivered orally. Since a Mt. Dew soda contains 55 mg of caffeine, drinking a case of Mt. Dew could kill some people.
Whereas there is no known lethal dose of THC (the active ingredient in pot)...
But pot is illegal even though coffee is statistically "abused" by more Americans than pot even though pot can't directly be a cause of death, and coffee can.
Lastly, yes 2000 gives you better file security out of the box. There are still some things that should be fine-tuned, but definitely not Full:Everyone.
I'm not sure if you mean:
1) They shouldn't move away from full control to everyone.
OR
2) They're not defaulting full control to everyone.
Luckily, I can respond that both statements are false. Both Share AND NTFS file permissions default full control to the Everyone group in Win2k.
And they definitely should move away from it. If it ever really happens? Well...
Of course, most NT admins are so used to removing the everyone group that if they didn't have to do it, everybody would notice it the first time they shared and secured a new folder/files.
For example, Metallica. On CDNOW, their older records like Ride the Lightning are $15. Their newest effort is $10. A 33% increase is enormous. Any album that sells strong enough to stay in the catalog (until they fade away) becomes a cash cow for the label.
Slashdot Mirror
It's interesting that you said office with a capital "O". In this day and age, Office with a capital "O" means Microsoft Office, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and guess you meant StarOffice or OpenOffice.org.
...And while it's true I could use StarOffice, since MS switches data file formats once monthly my friends using recent versions of MS Office won't be able to see the documents I send them. This means that in order to send data to these lost souls I have to fire up MS Office, copy and paste my text, clean up the formatting, and send it over like that. This is a great example of leveraging their monopoly through arbitrary changes to file formats. They've effectively made it a huge risk to even attempt using a competing product.
Also, MS has built quirks into IE so that pages that look great on Internet Explorer render horribbly or lose critical functionality on Netscape/Mozilla/Opera and others. Since IE has a vast majority of the browser market, cash and time strapped developers must choose who to alienate: IE users who represent a huge majority or all others who are the vast minoruty.
So even though you "can" use other browsers, the experience is diminished, and if you want these features, you're required to fire up IE.
Apparently I did misquote them. Even with the word "broad" in there, my question is still valid: How does the criminal get to negotiate his punishment?
Also, I have no objection to them improving their operating system, but please tell me what about Windows XP is an improvement over, say, Windows 2000?
Is it the new Media Software that, oh by the way, just happens to cripple files that don't come in Microsoft proprietary format? Or perhaps its the endless prodding to join MS Passport? When Microsoft has all your personal information on file, let me know...
Or are you just one of those Microsoft sympathizers who hypocritically refuses to join Passport? After all, it's such a huge improvement...
The term improvement implies that the new is easier, better, and/or faster than the old. What's easier,better, or faster about having to translate all my MP3 audio into WMA for it to sound good? What's easier about being constantly prodded to join Passport? What's better about businesses being forced to expand their IT budgets by (average) 20% annually? What's better about Microsoft getting a cut of every transaction on the internet (through royalty based web standards?)
I think the answer is clearly that nothing about any of those scenarios is better than what we're doing now. In fact, the only people who benefit from the monopoly and the continued leveraging of said monopoly that Windows XP allows are Microsoft and its investors.
PS. I've had the hotmail address since before Microsoft owned it, and I use a Mac. Blow me.
My first reaction to the remedies in the story: The least that could have happened was some sort of prohibition against any future leveraging with Windows. Way too light. These remedies don't even qualify as a slap on the wrist.
Microsoft's comments that they "wouldn't accept any prohibitions against bundling new features into windows" seem to indicate that they will continue their predatory business practices in the future.
The feds are really bending over and mooing on this one, cash whores that they are. Look on the bright side, though: They could've offerred to pay MS' lawyers fees too.
Rule of thumb: The more fun you have as a "Devil's Advocate", the less often you get laid.
Seriosuly, it's scientific fact. Look it up.
You could install it on your cruddy windows box, then use winipcfg OR ipconfig/all to get your TCP/IP stuff.
As far as I know, a DHCP discover from a Linux box is the same as a mac and a windows box...
[SARCASM]
REDMOND, WA--Microsoft has announced that it's followup to Windows XP will have every program ever written bundled into the OS, all starting automatically on boot-up, (including every lame computer class "Hello World!" prog.) and stream enough un-solicited pr0n ads to your kids to choke a horse.
"We feel these new functions will make Windows the OS of the next Millenium!" said an excited Bill Gates from his suburban Seattle office complex.
"I've already placed an order for ANOTHER new Bentley!"
Bill then went on to explain the new Goat Porn Download Accelerator (or GPDA), auto-matic Terrorist repelling prog (or NoSAMA) and several other new "features"...
[/SARCASM]
THEN you'll need a 3gHz monster...
Unfortunately, the Rogue Spear 2.05 patch doesn't install right. Gives the same error as the app does when I launch it.
I think I'll try scheduling the patch to run as Admin... Maybe that'll work.
My biggest gripe is that some apps are compatible with Win2k one day and not the next. Example? Tom Clancy's "Rogue Spear" and "Covert Ops".
Both games worked on Win2k Pro when I installed it, first with the eval version, then the full version I bought. This was caused by one of two things:
1) I upgraded my hard disks to dynamic so I could build a stripe for my MP3s.
2) I installed Service Packs 1 & 2.
I'm leaning towards number two, because immediately after installing SP1, Rogue Spear stopped working. After SP2, Covert Ops started giving me an unrecoverable error.
Two points: No employer has any business searching my home for any reason. Period.
Second: The government does NOT have the automatic right to "spot check you as you are walking down the street".
Arbitrary "spot checks" are unconstitutional. If the officer has reason to believe a crime is being committed he can question you hoping to find "probably cause" to search your person. Of course, if he arrests you on the basis of the conversation, he can automatically search you (for "his safety") for weapons before putting you in the police car.
It's a fine distinction, but it is completely untrue that the government (or anybody, for that matter) has the right to "spot check" anybody on the street.
...And if it's really a criminal they will simply destroy their key rather than comply with the subpeona.
Unless you want to increase the penalty for contempt of court to death, this is still a direct move to monitor the private communications of law-abiding citizens in the U.S. Scary.
I have friends who are planning on leaving the country permanently because of proposals like this. The least alarmist of them plans on living in Switzerland until he can legally get dual-citizenship... Who says bin Laden hasn't destroyed America? America as we know it, anyway...
If you are stuck in this unfortunate arrangement (having to run a customized version of Windows is a bigger nightmare than having to run regular strength windows) this is my recommendation:
Uninstall IIS, FTP, and SMTP services. (Your call if this is a best practice in every circumstance...
First, there is no legit use for Datacenter server other than SQL Server. Any DB large enough to warrant Datacenter could not be adequately administered using IIS. Second, rule #1 of SQL server is NEVER EVER RUN IIS ON YOUR SQL SERVER. If you break this rule, you do so at your own peril even without Code Red, Nimda, and whatever next week's major compromise is.
According to the MCT/Drone that taught us at my office, Datacenter can be modified to handle up to 64 processors based on hardware.
Essentially, we were told 99.999% of Windows business operations would never have any realistic need for Datacenter. This was designed for the poor bastard who has to run a site like E-Bay on windows/IIS.
[SARCASM]Or handle a national ID card DB...[/SARCASM]
With all of this said, if you're doing something that requires this much horsepower (64 GB of RAM and 32+ processors?) you should be running linux. I mean, how much of your horsepower on this type of machine is wasted by Windows just to handle the SMP?
Is Turkey in the west? What about India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, or Israel? (Or do you think the "jews should all die?") All of these places (including our allies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) are within striking distance of Saddam's chemical/biological arsenal. Never mind the people in his own country who he has already struck with various plagues.
In reality, Saddam's stock pile might not represent any threat to us. Without the ability to deliver it en masse to the US, it's not a real threat to us. I mean, SCUDs won't cross the Atlantic. Anybody within striking distance that doesn't share Saddam and bin Laden's radical view of Islam lives in fear of the day that he uses it.
So was the WTC attack a "request for negotiations"? Perhaps when the Taliban kidnapped American citizens who were working with the UN relief effort and "put them on trial" this was an attempt to negotiate with us. Maybe when our Beirut embassy blew up, that was an effort at a breakthrough! It's clear now we've been interpreting these people all wrong for some time now.
Here's something to think about: the Taliban are skinning men alive with hunting knives in villages they conquer in their war with the Northern Alliance. They are systematically slaughtering civillians everywhere they go, systematically raping and murdering women and children everywhere they go.
What about this requires negotiation? Here's the deal amigo: If this group doesn't get stomped down right now, it will only get worse. If we gave-in to their every demand, and were out of everywhere and we told Israel they were on their own and all that, they'd still find something to blow up buildings over.
People like this are living anachronisms, belonging as much in our contemporary, civilized, non-Mass Murdering society as Stephen Spielberg's Velociraptor .
Soon, men like bin Laden and Hussein will join other dinosaurs in extinction.
What's really screwed up about the entertainment industry is that they freaked out about the potential writer's strike last year and went into high gear producing every script in sight.
End result? A gut wrenchingly bad lineup at the local megaplex that includes movies like Legally Blonde and Corky Romano.
Could somebody please revoke Lorne Michaels license to make a movie please?
Two things:
1) Any civillians who die in Afghanistan or Iraq were killed by their government's irresponsible refusal to act in the interest of world security. If Iraqi children are dying, perhaps the radicals should take the direct route to ending the sanctions and encourage/force Saddam to allow UN Weapons Inspectors into the country.
2) Anybody who thinks 6,000 intentional murders and a couple hundred accidental deaths are morally equivalent acts is out of their mind.
3) Perhaps, instead of having sanctions and bombing raids we should just allow our buildings to be destroyed, or citizens murdered, our troops gassed, and our allies invaded.
Food for thought, anyway.
Indeed.
In this situation "THE RIGHT THING" and what would provide them with the best competitive advantage happily coincided. After all, MS is several years into developing royalty technology. Do HP and Apple really want to compete in a royalty environment with MS having a headstart on development?
I think they thought about it and realized that they would only be feeding the beast by supporting royalty based standards. After all, MS has the most to gain from this. It's a simple mob tactic.
After all, MS is taxing the OEM hardware/software, software vendor, business software and business OS/hardware markets. The next logical step in their racket is to try and get a stranglehold on the internet.
Simple mob tactic. Identify opportunity. Enter market. Destroy competition, tax everybody you do business with, and make sure to box competitors out of the market, one way or the other.
It seems like a lot of people in situations like this (like this "Mike Davis" character) use evidence of the current system's incompetence as proof that "we need a bigger bueracracy."
Couldn't have said it better myself...
This is a good argument for searching the criminal warrants DB when you run a license, then calling the police. A much simpler (and cheaper) solution that giving Oracle $5 billion and saying "make it work".
It's a good fantasy, but here are the problems (the biggest three that come to mind):
1) Price. The "ID Card" you're describing sounds more like a PDA with wireless networking than an inanimate piece of plastic. How much will that cost to develop/deliver?
2) Network. What wireless network will these cards use to be "validated/invalidated by a central server"? As far as I know, there isn't a nationwide (covering everywhere people live and work) wireless network that could provide this service.
3) Ineffective. This system is only useful against people who are using their own identity to get ID. Anybody who (gasp!) uses false documents to get one is undetectable until after the fact. This alone makes this entire system completely useless.
Nope. Not a good idea in the least. Maybe in Candyland, but not here.
The only reason I may ever still go for Intel, is for the Flask encoding speeds
I like to encode my flask manually, usually Jack Daniels or Johnny Walker...
The point of the column was that the vast majority of Windows users do not have such "easy access" to file type assignments. Yeah, Win2k puts this function in a slightly less obscure place, but again, as of today, since most machines are still running win95/98/nt, so the vast majority of people currently using Windows will not be able to change the file type assignments without help.
Also, I'd like to dispute the notion that anything involving a "right-click" is "simplified to the point that anybody can do it." Most Windows users don't have a clue what a "right-click" is or what the right button on their mouse really does.
The simple truth is that the same vast majority of users who couldn't figure out how to change file-type assignments in Win98 probably still won't be able to in Win2000.
Expecting these same people who can't find the dialog to be able to do it now just because they moved the function to a slightly less obscure place (that they also don't know how to find/user) is just ludicrous.
Despite what Microsoft would have you believe, Win2k is not a majority of PC users. It's not even most of them. All those people running win95/98/NT have been getting screwed for years.
Saying it's "fixed in 2000" is a copout way of saying "We did it really stupid before."
No, but I will equate pot with coffee. (It's a better analogy anyways since over half the people arrested for "Drug" offenses are arrested for weed.)
The simple truth is that simple regular coffee is more harmful than weed.
The LD 50 for caffeine (amount that would kill 50% of individuals in a test group) is 10g delivered orally. Since a Mt. Dew soda contains 55 mg of caffeine, drinking a case of Mt. Dew could kill some people.
Whereas there is no known lethal dose of THC (the active ingredient in pot)...
But pot is illegal even though coffee is statistically "abused" by more Americans than pot even though pot can't directly be a cause of death, and coffee can.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'm not sure if you mean:
1) They shouldn't move away from full control to everyone.
OR
2) They're not defaulting full control to everyone.
Luckily, I can respond that both statements are false. Both Share AND NTFS file permissions default full control to the Everyone group in Win2k.
And they definitely should move away from it. If it ever really happens? Well...
Of course, most NT admins are so used to removing the everyone group that if they didn't have to do it, everybody would notice it the first time they shared and secured a new folder/files.
...Because eventually bands fade.
But look at this:
For example, Metallica. On CDNOW, their older records like Ride the Lightning are $15. Their newest effort is $10. A 33% increase is enormous. Any album that sells strong enough to stay in the catalog (until they fade away) becomes a cash cow for the label.
IE5 does this on my OS X machine every time since 10.0.0. After downloading any archive stuffit automatically unstuffs it.
Mozilla 0.9.4 only opens archives when you say "Open Now" instead of "Save to Disk".