And to split hairs, homosexuals currently have the right to marry.
That's not splitting hairs, that's being stupid and completely missing the point of the entire debate. The debate is not about allowing individual homosexuals to marry a person they have no interest in marrying. It's about allowing same-sex couples to marry each other. It's not about individuals, it's about couples. Different-sex couples can marry (as in, "each other"). Same-sex couples cannot.
From my point of view, the state/government should get out of the "marriage" business all together.
Why? Marriage began as a legal institution. The religious aspect is just an optional add-on. Why should religion get to take it over completely?
I don't think that is true for all platforms at least. Way back (almost last year) I couldn't turn off some plug-ins in Firefox on a Linux desktop. However last time I checked, they could all be "turned off" (whatever that means... I guess disable.)
Yes, plugins can be disabled from within Firefox. But they can't be removed.
I'd like to add that this is a good thing. The plugin mechanism is useful, and for it be effective it really must work the way they've designed it. However, it would be much better if the user was warned of new plugins and given the choice to enable/disable at that time.
Actually, this wasn't a test of who can tell the difference, it was more a test of which do you like more.
10 out of 16 people thought that crisper symbols and vocals meant higher bit-rate, while 6 out of 16 thought that bigger bass sound meant higher bit-rate.
100% were able to spot the difference between the two.
Why would Microsoft submit its extension to Mozilla and follow the standard operating procedures as far as the dot net thingie is concerned? The user base and use cases for Mozilla/Firefox has always been, you get extensions from one authorized source.
Extensions, yes. Plug-ins, no.
The Mozilla Team made a technical distinction between extensions and plug-ins for a reason. Extensions are, for the most part, centrally managed, while plug-ins are intended to be externally managed. The point of a plug-in is that it is installed and uninstalled by an external application (ie. not Firefox).
This is useful functionality, however it would be nice if Firefox would warn the user when it detects a new plug-in that wasn't there the last time Firefox was run.
That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place.
Unfortunately, that's how plugins work. I just checked, and the install of Firefox that I'm using right now has 8 plugins in it. I expected two of them (Quicktime and Flash). All the rest just came along as part of something else.
That's how the Firefox plugin system works. It would be nice if Firefox provided a message to the user saying "I've detected a new plugin", but it doesn't. That's something to complain to Mozilla about, not Microsoft.
Microsoft forcibly installed said plug-in, and prevented its removal.
The first statement is debatable, since the plugin is a part of the.NET Framework, and people can choose not to install the.NET Framework — although I realize newer versions of Windows have it preinstalled, so there's less of a choice there, which is why I say it's debatable.
However, the second statement is just wrong. It's not Microsoft who prevented removal of the plugin, it's Mozilla. Firefox does not provide a mechanism for removing any plugins.
Your point is valid, and you're not the only one who thought of it. Others have pointed out that this didn't come from regular donations, but I just wanted to weigh in and say that the moderation you've received (currently "Score: 0, Troll") is ridiculous. Yours was a valid comment, and a useful contribution to this discussion.
Because he does not have the capital to survive the beating he will get from established competitors.
If it's truly a new idea, then there are no established competitors. He will be the first, and the competition will follow.
Of course, this entire discussion hinges on the ridiculous belief that ideas are worth something. They're not. Every moron has a million ideas. Implementation is everything. If he can't/won't implement the idea, then he doesn't have anything of any value anyway.
If he gives his idea away, then everyone but him is going to profit off it. I say he deserves to get his cut.
I'm having trouble following the logic here. How would he not be able to profit off of an idea that others are able to profit from? Can he not do the same thing with that idea that the others would do, and compete with them?
Ideas aren't physical objects. When you give it away, you still have it.
Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well).
Are you kidding me? So freakin' what? It's a game. It's not real life. You play it for fun. Should a person be "not qualified" to play a game if they're not good enough? And if so, by whose standards?
You can poke non-friends, but that's irrelevant. The point is this: If Bob has been ordered by the court not to contact Sue, and he contacts Sue, he is at fault. Period. It is not up to Sue to prevent Bob from contacting him (she already did that by getting the fucking restraining order in the first place). Bob is responsible for his own actions.
This is an issue of personal responsibility. Yes, there are steps Sue can take to avoid Bob. Yes, some of those steps may be smart things to do. But, even if Sue does not take those steps, it is Bob's fault, and only Bob's fault, if Bob decides to violate the restraining order and contact Sue.
Why is this so difficult for so many people to understand?
Except that unlike real life, on Facebook you can simply ban other users from having any interaction with you, and its quite simple too.
That's not at all unlike real life. There are many ways in real life to avoid the person you have a restraining order against. The point is, even if you don't, it's not your fault that they violated the restraining order.
It's smart to take action to prevent others from harming you. However, if someone does intentionally harm you, even if you could've done something to possibly prevent it, they are responsible for their own actions.
It's not up to me to prevent you from breaking the law.
There should be no reason the complainant hadn't already done this and avoided this situation altogether.
You're assuming the complainant was even aware that the defendant had a Facebook account. The article doesn't go into detail about that. It seems to me (unless this has changed since I last used Facebook) you can get poked by anyone regardless of whether you've ever had any contact with them on Facebook before.
Barack Obama missed a golden opportunity to posit himself as a great man. He could have refused the prize, citing the obvious fact that he has not achieved anything of substance yet.
How has he already missed this opportunity? How do you know he won't do just that? The announcement was only made this morning, and he hasn't even issued an official statement yet.
I'm not saying that I think he will refuse the prize, but here we all are criticizing the Nobel committee for being premature, and now you're saying he's missed an opportunity to make a statement by refusing the prize when it's only been a few hours since he found out about it and we don't even know what his response is going to be.
Give the man a chance to eat his breakfast and put his tie on before you criticize him for what he didn't do.
The PC Pro article linked to in the summary misquoted its own source. It claims that "12345" is the most common password, however the source it links to actually shows "123456" as the most common password. "12345" doesn't even make the list.
There really aren't that many users using those "common" passwords. Only 82 users use the top two passwords, which make up only 0.8% of all the passwords in the list. Only 1.56% of the accounts used a top-10 password.
The rest of the information at the Acunetix link is quite interesting, though. The evaluation determines that only 6% of all the passwords used a combination of alpha, numeric, and other characters.
...many are pointing to the same bug that claimed at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail.
Phishing is not a "bug". A bug would mean this was some Microsoft developer's fault. There is nothing a developer can do to prevent someone from conning someone else into giving up their password.
While not as largely successful and more juvenile, I think WKUK is a modern version of Monty Python.
You should watch their classroom sketch/skit
The closest I came to seeing a modern day Monty Python was an English duo who called themselves Hoopal. Unfortunately, as a group, they are no more, but one of them, now relocated to Toronto, is still active as a solo performer (I'm not sure about the other).
My Dad was a big fan of the TV show, but he claims he didn't like the films. I've been trying to get him to watch "Life Of Brian", as I believe it is more linear and coherent than the others. (And simply too good to miss). What say you?
If he was a big fan of Flying Circus, it's possible he'll like Life of Brianleast, precisely because it's the most linear and coherent, whereas Flying Circus was anything but linear and coherent.
Meaning of Life is probably the most like the TV show.
Everyone always says, "I can just plug in my dual wizbang monitors and Windows detects it all and everything JUST WORKS!"
Anyone who says that absolutely everything "just works" in any operating system is an idiot.
Generally, what people say about Windows is that most common devices "just work" when you plug them in. In my experience, this is true.
In my experience, this is also mostly true in Linux, but only very recently, and to a lesser extent than in Windows. For example, I still haven't seen a decent "plug it in and it works" distro for dual monitors. Also, it wasn't until Ubuntu 9.04 came out that I finally found a distro that "just worked" for the wireless adapter in my laptop. However, most other devices "just work" quite nicely.
Personally, I use both, but for different purposes. All my servers run Linux, and all my workstations and media centers run Windows (I experimented with Linux media centers, but I found Windows to be a better fit there).
I have no idea why you brought Linux or TV's into this conversation. Perhaps you are confused? Or just a troll?
Because the problem you described, as you described it, exactly matches the problem that countless people have had whenever their video card is attempting to send one video to two different video output devices, such as a monitor and a projector (the most common occurrence), or a monitor and a TV (which happened to me), even though it works fine with two monitors (just like it did for you). The symptoms you described do not match the symptoms of a DRM problem.
The point is, you think it has to do with sending to a digital display device (even though it worked fine on your laptop's built-in monitor, which is also digital), but the symptoms you describe match a very different problem that has nothing to do with DRM or digital devices.
Insensitive ass or Microsoft apologist? Maybe you're a little bit of both.
Or maybe I'm just sick of seeing DRM in Windows being blamed for everything. I despise DRM, which is why I don't buy any DRM-infested media. As a result, I've never had a problem caused by DRM even though I've used Vista for years. If you don't buy DRM-infested media, then DRM is simply not the problem that everyone around here tries to make it out to be.
...the company who created a video memorial was unable to show it on a digital projector under XP because of DRM.
How do you know it was "because of DRM"? If it actually was caused by DRM (unlikely), then the company who created the memorial had to have put digital restrictions in to the video. The question you should be asking is why they did that?
More likely, the problem you experienced with the video portion showing a black rectangle through the projector is the same problem countless other people have had, which has nothing whatsoever to do with DRM. Google it. There are lots of people solving exactly that problem. Most involve either updating the video drivers, changing hardware acceleration settings, or ensuring that you switch the laptop video output to external only rather than both external and laptop screen at the same time. None of the solutions involve DRM in any way.
By the way, I've seen the exact same problem with Linux connected to a TV. But hey, if you want to hate Microsoft for that, I guess that's your choice.
Why is it sad that something that has been honed over decades comes out on top of something that hasn't even reached beta testing yet? I would hope the ATC system comes out very, very, very far on top.
Slashdot Mirror
And to split hairs, homosexuals currently have the right to marry.
That's not splitting hairs, that's being stupid and completely missing the point of the entire debate. The debate is not about allowing individual homosexuals to marry a person they have no interest in marrying. It's about allowing same-sex couples to marry each other. It's not about individuals, it's about couples. Different-sex couples can marry (as in, "each other"). Same-sex couples cannot.
From my point of view, the state/government should get out of the "marriage" business all together.
Why? Marriage began as a legal institution. The religious aspect is just an optional add-on. Why should religion get to take it over completely?
Because marriage is a religious ceremony.
In what parallel universe?
Marriage existed as a legal institution long before the church ever got involved.
Give it another term
Why? If the word fits, use it.
don't require a J.O.P. to perform any kind of service
Why not? That's their job.
and don't ask any church to sanction it.
No one ever has. This is, and has always been, about the legal definition of marriage. It has nothing to do with any church.
I don't think that is true for all platforms at least. Way back (almost last year) I couldn't turn off some plug-ins in Firefox on a Linux desktop. However last time I checked, they could all be "turned off" (whatever that means... I guess disable.)
Yes, plugins can be disabled from within Firefox. But they can't be removed.
I'd like to add that this is a good thing. The plugin mechanism is useful, and for it be effective it really must work the way they've designed it. However, it would be much better if the user was warned of new plugins and given the choice to enable/disable at that time.
Actually, this wasn't a test of who can tell the difference, it was more a test of which do you like more.
10 out of 16 people thought that crisper symbols and vocals meant higher bit-rate, while 6 out of 16 thought that bigger bass sound meant higher bit-rate.
100% were able to spot the difference between the two.
Why would Microsoft submit its extension to Mozilla and follow the standard operating procedures as far as the dot net thingie is concerned? The user base and use cases for Mozilla/Firefox has always been, you get extensions from one authorized source.
Extensions, yes. Plug-ins, no.
The Mozilla Team made a technical distinction between extensions and plug-ins for a reason. Extensions are, for the most part, centrally managed, while plug-ins are intended to be externally managed. The point of a plug-in is that it is installed and uninstalled by an external application (ie. not Firefox).
This is useful functionality, however it would be nice if Firefox would warn the user when it detects a new plug-in that wasn't there the last time Firefox was run.
That, plus you have to remember that this plugin was being installed without user's knowledge in the first place.
Unfortunately, that's how plugins work. I just checked, and the install of Firefox that I'm using right now has 8 plugins in it. I expected two of them (Quicktime and Flash). All the rest just came along as part of something else.
That's how the Firefox plugin system works. It would be nice if Firefox provided a message to the user saying "I've detected a new plugin", but it doesn't. That's something to complain to Mozilla about, not Microsoft.
Microsoft forcibly installed said plug-in, and prevented its removal.
The first statement is debatable, since the plugin is a part of the .NET Framework, and people can choose not to install the .NET Framework — although I realize newer versions of Windows have it preinstalled, so there's less of a choice there, which is why I say it's debatable.
However, the second statement is just wrong. It's not Microsoft who prevented removal of the plugin, it's Mozilla. Firefox does not provide a mechanism for removing any plugins.
Your point is valid, and you're not the only one who thought of it. Others have pointed out that this didn't come from regular donations, but I just wanted to weigh in and say that the moderation you've received (currently "Score: 0, Troll") is ridiculous. Yours was a valid comment, and a useful contribution to this discussion.
Because he does not have the capital to survive the beating he will get from established competitors.
If it's truly a new idea, then there are no established competitors. He will be the first, and the competition will follow.
Of course, this entire discussion hinges on the ridiculous belief that ideas are worth something. They're not. Every moron has a million ideas. Implementation is everything. If he can't/won't implement the idea, then he doesn't have anything of any value anyway.
If he gives his idea away, then everyone but him is going to profit off it. I say he deserves to get his cut.
I'm having trouble following the logic here. How would he not be able to profit off of an idea that others are able to profit from? Can he not do the same thing with that idea that the others would do, and compete with them?
Ideas aren't physical objects. When you give it away, you still have it.
Some people would claim that adapting the game to you just rewards mediocrity (i.e. you don't get rewarded for playing well).
Are you kidding me? So freakin' what? It's a game. It's not real life. You play it for fun. Should a person be "not qualified" to play a game if they're not good enough? And if so, by whose standards?
You can poke non-friends, but that's irrelevant. The point is this: If Bob has been ordered by the court not to contact Sue, and he contacts Sue, he is at fault. Period. It is not up to Sue to prevent Bob from contacting him (she already did that by getting the fucking restraining order in the first place). Bob is responsible for his own actions.
This is an issue of personal responsibility. Yes, there are steps Sue can take to avoid Bob. Yes, some of those steps may be smart things to do. But, even if Sue does not take those steps, it is Bob's fault, and only Bob's fault, if Bob decides to violate the restraining order and contact Sue.
Why is this so difficult for so many people to understand?
Except that unlike real life, on Facebook you can simply ban other users from having any interaction with you, and its quite simple too.
That's not at all unlike real life. There are many ways in real life to avoid the person you have a restraining order against. The point is, even if you don't, it's not your fault that they violated the restraining order.
It's smart to take action to prevent others from harming you. However, if someone does intentionally harm you, even if you could've done something to possibly prevent it, they are responsible for their own actions.
It's not up to me to prevent you from breaking the law.
There should be no reason the complainant hadn't already done this and avoided this situation altogether.
You're assuming the complainant was even aware that the defendant had a Facebook account. The article doesn't go into detail about that. It seems to me (unless this has changed since I last used Facebook) you can get poked by anyone regardless of whether you've ever had any contact with them on Facebook before.
It's been a while since I was on Facebook, but back when I used to use it, you could poke anyone, whether or not they were a friend. Has that changed?
Barack Obama missed a golden opportunity to posit himself as a great man. He could have refused the prize, citing the obvious fact that he has not achieved anything of substance yet.
How has he already missed this opportunity? How do you know he won't do just that? The announcement was only made this morning, and he hasn't even issued an official statement yet.
I'm not saying that I think he will refuse the prize, but here we all are criticizing the Nobel committee for being premature, and now you're saying he's missed an opportunity to make a statement by refusing the prize when it's only been a few hours since he found out about it and we don't even know what his response is going to be.
Give the man a chance to eat his breakfast and put his tie on before you criticize him for what he didn't do.
The PC Pro article linked to in the summary misquoted its own source. It claims that "12345" is the most common password, however the source it links to actually shows "123456" as the most common password. "12345" doesn't even make the list.
There really aren't that many users using those "common" passwords. Only 82 users use the top two passwords, which make up only 0.8% of all the passwords in the list. Only 1.56% of the accounts used a top-10 password.
The rest of the information at the Acunetix link is quite interesting, though. The evaluation determines that only 6% of all the passwords used a combination of alpha, numeric, and other characters.
...many are pointing to the same bug that claimed at least 10,000 passwords from Microsoft Windows Live Hotmail.
Phishing is not a "bug". A bug would mean this was some Microsoft developer's fault. There is nothing a developer can do to prevent someone from conning someone else into giving up their password.
While not as largely successful and more juvenile, I think WKUK is a modern version of Monty Python.
You should watch their classroom sketch/skit
The closest I came to seeing a modern day Monty Python was an English duo who called themselves Hoopal. Unfortunately, as a group, they are no more, but one of them, now relocated to Toronto, is still active as a solo performer (I'm not sure about the other).
My Dad was a big fan of the TV show, but he claims he didn't like the films. I've been trying to get him to watch "Life Of Brian", as I believe it is more linear and coherent than the others. (And simply too good to miss). What say you?
If he was a big fan of Flying Circus, it's possible he'll like Life of Brian least, precisely because it's the most linear and coherent, whereas Flying Circus was anything but linear and coherent.
Meaning of Life is probably the most like the TV show.
Everyone always says, "I can just plug in my dual wizbang monitors and Windows detects it all and everything JUST WORKS!"
Anyone who says that absolutely everything "just works" in any operating system is an idiot.
Generally, what people say about Windows is that most common devices "just work" when you plug them in. In my experience, this is true.
In my experience, this is also mostly true in Linux, but only very recently, and to a lesser extent than in Windows. For example, I still haven't seen a decent "plug it in and it works" distro for dual monitors. Also, it wasn't until Ubuntu 9.04 came out that I finally found a distro that "just worked" for the wireless adapter in my laptop. However, most other devices "just work" quite nicely.
Personally, I use both, but for different purposes. All my servers run Linux, and all my workstations and media centers run Windows (I experimented with Linux media centers, but I found Windows to be a better fit there).
I have no idea why you brought Linux or TV's into this conversation. Perhaps you are confused? Or just a troll?
Because the problem you described, as you described it, exactly matches the problem that countless people have had whenever their video card is attempting to send one video to two different video output devices, such as a monitor and a projector (the most common occurrence), or a monitor and a TV (which happened to me), even though it works fine with two monitors (just like it did for you). The symptoms you described do not match the symptoms of a DRM problem.
The point is, you think it has to do with sending to a digital display device (even though it worked fine on your laptop's built-in monitor, which is also digital), but the symptoms you describe match a very different problem that has nothing to do with DRM or digital devices.
Insensitive ass or Microsoft apologist? Maybe you're a little bit of both.
Or maybe I'm just sick of seeing DRM in Windows being blamed for everything. I despise DRM, which is why I don't buy any DRM-infested media. As a result, I've never had a problem caused by DRM even though I've used Vista for years. If you don't buy DRM-infested media, then DRM is simply not the problem that everyone around here tries to make it out to be.
Quick! Somebody buy the Sony engineers a pair of these!
...the company who created a video memorial was unable to show it on a digital projector under XP because of DRM.
How do you know it was "because of DRM"? If it actually was caused by DRM (unlikely), then the company who created the memorial had to have put digital restrictions in to the video. The question you should be asking is why they did that?
More likely, the problem you experienced with the video portion showing a black rectangle through the projector is the same problem countless other people have had, which has nothing whatsoever to do with DRM. Google it. There are lots of people solving exactly that problem. Most involve either updating the video drivers, changing hardware acceleration settings, or ensuring that you switch the laptop video output to external only rather than both external and laptop screen at the same time. None of the solutions involve DRM in any way.
By the way, I've seen the exact same problem with Linux connected to a TV. But hey, if you want to hate Microsoft for that, I guess that's your choice.
Why is it sad that something that has been honed over decades comes out on top of something that hasn't even reached beta testing yet? I would hope the ATC system comes out very, very, very far on top.