What do you do when you need to reinstall a current version of IE? You can't reinstall from the distribution CD, you can't uninstall if the installer is broken... what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO!!!
Well, you do what every IT person since the 1970s has done when they needed a file where they couldn't download it, they put it on other media (tape, floppy, CDRW, DVDRW, ssd) and move it over, or if they're really lazy or don't have physical access they use FTP, you know, good 'ol FTP that comes with the default version of Windows, and download it with that.
I need a Windows machine at home where I run mostly Linux, I don't want to babysit it, I don't want clueless visitors to get viruses on it, so I remove IE right from the start. No biggie.
Too hard? If IE disappeared (here's to hope) then you'd see browsers, probably Safari and Firefox distributed with everything: You want fries and Firefox with that?
An idiot would assume that failing to communicate successfully because of common associations is the fault of the listeners. If you use the word "niggardly" in your communications without considering the likely misunderstandings, then you are at fault. Likewise, if you use words that you know will be misconstrued as hateful in a group that you believe will condone such biases, but refuse to use them in a group where you assume the worst because of skin color, then yes, that does make you racist.
As a teen I was accused of being "deliberately obtuse." It cut to the bone because first, they were right, and second because I didn't know what it meant and had to look up the meaning. If I've called you a racist, I hope it cuts to the bone in the same way.
Racist doesn't only mean that you believe that people are inferior due to skin color, it also means that you believe that it is okay to assume that people react differently based solely on their skin color. If you tailor your words to avoid terms because you believe that people who are black will be offended by terms with racial associations, then you are assuming that a black person is going to be less educated than a white one.
The real ugly truth? It's still, tremendously sadly, reasonable to guess that a black person is more likely to be offended by the word "niggardly" than a white person. My country, the US, has a history of racial intolerance and racial bigotry that is embarrassing, but the sad fact is that a breakdown of education or a breakdown of ignorant offense, where either demographic is by race, will show that blacks are more likely to be offended due to poor word choices and are less educated.
Let me be absolutely clear, blacks are more likely to be ignorant and resentful than whites. It is NOT due to the color of skin; it is due to a severe sociological problem that has grouped blacks into a single sociatial group when they don't need to belong to one. That grouping has led to people from every group making false assumptions about their own race and about other races. Thankfully, this is not a natural order and has been steadily improving over the last century and with empathy and effort, it will continue to improve. One starting point, don't use the word "niggardly" outside of an educational setting. It is likely to be misconstrued as racist by many and using it fuels pointless animosity and bigotry.
Wow. I mean Whoa and wow! Thanks, I needed that. It had been a long day and being reminded that there are plenty of stupid people did me good. I immediately thought "What? Saying averages are essentially identical is somehow insinuating that one group of people is smarter than another? Idiot." I hit reply. I started marshaling my thoughts preparing to point out that it's obvious any group of people classified by skin color will have both exceptionally smart and exceptionally stupid people, but averages are a littler harder to quantify, and mostly, well, they average out.
Then I read the post again, and I then noticed that the poster said "stupider then" as if it were intended to say "stupider than" and thought, "wow, what an example right there of stupidity." Stupidity is the unwillingness to learn and nothing says "I'm stupid" more than basic grammar mistakes while errantly correcting someone else's grammar mistake."
It was then that I realized that I'm responding to someone who typified all the mistakes they criticized in a single post. I can't decide if it is an example of extreme arrogance based on stubborn stupidity or subtle and thick ironic sarcasm.
Kudos to you Tyrannicalposter, I've never before seen someone so brilliantly stupid in one line.
Reasonable point and one I didn't consider when replying. There are some other posts that point out that it does have usage clauses, but is intended to be a distribution control.
Screw it, I say. If make 'em click okay or do "Ctrl + Alt + F2". If you like we can put "[Whatever]" buttons on those places where agreement is not required since that is what most people say when they see them anyway.
Before you even get to install the OS, or use it for the first time if preinstalled, you get a prompt "This is the GPLv2 which you must agree to in order to use most of the software on this CD or system.
The eighteen tabs above represent all the other licenses required by any software on this CD. None of them will keep you from being able to use and modify the source code. None of them require any payment. You may agree to or decline them individually, or select All here. [All][Agree to GPLv2 and Next]"
Eighteen is of course, a random number I picked to represent what would require actual research on behalf of a distributor. If there are far more (unlikely) then they could be subgrouped into "Free to use, redistribute only with restrictions" and "Free to use, free to redistribute only with credits" and "Free to use, redistribution requires other arrangements."
I've seen some similar agreements required for installation of various distributions and I know there is at least one, usually more, required for installation of a Windows system. We're not talking really onerous requirements here. By getting the agreements up front, at installation, Ubuntu could cut out almost all the hassle as they decide to use other software with standard license agreements.
Oh, and not to let a nit go unpicked, ls and cd are part of bash, so even if in some crazy world you could get to the point where you had to agree to a EULA before launching bash, you wouldn't have to agree to it again to run other portions of the same program.
Most people who hear of "free software" hear it in the same context you hear about free trials, free introductory period, free fries with the purchase of a regular entree, or free beer if you sign up for our newsletter. People think of free as "meaning no payment necessary if you agree to something else." This isn't even misleading, since once they hear the "catch" is that you typically have allow redistribution of any source code you happen to write, their first thought is "what is source code?" and it's shortly followed by "suckers!"
In context, where people regularly discuss Open Source Software, the term free means "probably GPL, but maybe just some other common OSS license." For clarity, I usually refer to OSS, or even Open Source Software to make sure that people understand my intent, but expecting a community that regularly discusses GPL and Apache licensed software to switch to something more complex is a little overoptimistic.
On the good side, most OSS is Free as in price as well, and people do like free stuff.
The FUD machine? Really? Fear may be justified, Uncertainty is reasonable if trends are visibly changing, Doubt is about observing bad trends. FUD is bad if unsupported, but is it unsupported? Lets talk cases.
First, why should there be so much potential FUD? It would be ever so simple to point out some third party benchmarks to easily make the point, rather than parroting the company line, but you failed to provide a link. I find plenty of references in articles to the EULA restrictions, articles that benchmark other VM platforms, but absolutely no other third party VMWare benchmarks. None. I'm sure there are some reputable comparative benchmarks out there somewhere since "allmost all submissions get approved" but I searched again today, still nothing. Why?
You may use the Software to conduct internal performance testing and benchmarking studies, the results of which you (and not unauthorized third parties) may publish or publicly disseminate; provided that VMware has reviewed and approved of the methodology, assumptions and other parameters of the study. Please contact VMware at benchmark@vmware.com to request such review.
The only Fear I see is that somebody will test the products and publish results. Feel free though, you can download trials and test for yourself, good luck getting permission to publish. If you want to see the version from XenSource, google cache will provide. (Search for hypervisor_performance_comparison_1_0_5_with_esx-data.pdf) Here are some highlights:
As expected the SPECjbb2005 [on Windows] performance for a single vCPU VM on both ESX
and XenEnterprise are both excellent and within only 0.5% of the native score.
Figure 9 shows that XenEnterprise outperforms ESX for the two-vCPU test with
close to a 1.5% lead, but ESX is slightly ahead on the four-vCPU test with a lead
of just under 1%. We conclude that both platforms perform these tests very well,
with basically equivalent performance....
SPECjbb2005 on Linux... XenEnterprise outperforms ESX for the 2 vCPU test by a margin of
13%. In fact, XenEnterprise is only 2% slower than native RHEL 4.4, whereas ESX is
15% slower than native. On the four-vCPU test, XenEnterprise performs even better,
being 24% better than ESX....
As for Doubt, VMWare stock has been pretty much tanking. ("Tanking", like "killed" is a statement of opinion, not a technical term.) Really, I don't expect this to turn around for EMC's VMWare, and apparently neither do investors.
Shares have gone from $125 in 2004, to $33.95 according to Forbes. Not what I'd call marketplace confidence. The Doubt part is certainly well established.
I like to plan to get good support in five years, but will EMC really be invested in supporting it if the stock becomes worthless? An independent company might reinvent itself, but a subsidiary of EMC, probably not so much. I suppose that is Uncertainty: will VMWare still be for sale and/or supported in 5 years? If I worked for VMWare, I'd be concerned about my job. Consider those already jumping ship: Diane Greene (co-founder, CEO), Mendel Rosenblum (co-founder, visionary and scientist), Richard Sarwal (exec from Oracle who went back to Oracle), and now Paul Chan, Vice President of Product Development.
Honestly, good benchmarks and solid technical comparisons by independent parties would go a long way. I say they aren't there because the Corporate Overlords fear them and aren't driven to improve the products, just sell them, and without improvements, VMWare will die. I expect EMC will abandon VMWare rather than investing in improving it. I expect that there are no current benchmarks published because EMC doesn't want them published. Please show me that I'm wrong. Please show me that EMC isn't killing what was once a great company with good products.
Show me the numbers, somewhere besides on VMWare's site.
Being ignorant, that is to say, having little or no knowledge of a subject, does not mean that someone is incapable of learning (stupid.) I have two users I support on a regular basis who know how to do their jobs well, and complicated jobs at that, but don't know much at all about the computer they're using. One was recently quite frustrated that they weren't able to open PDF files with Word, the idea that files required specific applications to be used was a revelation. (Yeah, I might have been able to get it to work, but simple is better.) Another was only vaguely aware that they could navigate to files outside of applications, starting with My Computer was a novelty.
Both have the capacity to learn how to use their computer for more than they have, and they are both capable of doing complex work very well. That said, there is some basic knowledge that IT professionals take for granted. The concepts of files and programs is a distinction that many computer users never make. The OS is a concept that both could grasp, but neither has any motivation to learn since it doesn't help them accomplish their tasks any faster or easier. It proves a distraction in fact to learn the things that they *could* do, since actually doing those things would cut down on their production and learning how to do them would take valuable time.
Just to underscore the point, I recently put in a call to tech support for a complex application that was not functioning correctly. The subject matter was one of moving significant amounts of money that belong to other people, so we're not talking minor stuff. The support technician told me to open up "your Internet" and was quick to blame the oft maligned Microsoft Updates for the problem (and no, it was not an update at fault.) Granted, the reference to Internet Explorer, which is what they really meant, and the assumption that updates applied flawlessly to millions of computers would mysteriously make one machine malfunction did nothing to improve my assessment of their knowledge, but in the end they knew all they needed to in order to fix the issue. Their SOP was sufficient without real understanding of the underlying technology.
The computing industry is still in infancy. Like a two year old taking first steps, the industry has collectively leaned a tremendous number of things and started to make huge headway into new areas. Like a toddler, we are proud and excited and tend to think that whatever we're currently doing (cloud computing, virtualization, ajax, xml) is the coolest thing ever. Often we have no idea what we're going to be excited by next. Note that none of this is bad, but perhaps a little perspective is called for.
In the not too terribly distant future, the computer may be unimportant, the OS may be unimportant and the particular applications may be unimportant. It doesn't take a tremendous leap to imagine systems that look and feel pretty much like a browser but handle any type of content we want to throw at it and can analyze faster and better than we've grown used to expecting. Imagine an AI that could do all the tasks for you, which currently require "basic" computing knowledge. I submit that we'll soon look back on the days of files, applications and operating systems like we do now on the different types of engine building knowledge of a hundred years ago. It won't be unimportant, but users soon really won't need to know and when they don't, and they won't, it will be the most efficient tools that are used, not the best marketed.
Just a note, you won't ever see unfavorable benchmarks to VMWware, because they explicitly forbid publishing benchmarks without their authorization. Some time back (maybe a couple years now) VMWare published very biased results showing that (well Optimized) VMWare outperformed (Completely unoptimized) Xen. Xen shot back with Apples to Apples numbers where they showed that in a few special cases they were more less equal, but everywhere else Xen killed in the benchmarks. VMWare promptly threatened suit and pointed to their EULA which effectively says: Use of our product guarantees your agreement that you will not publish any comparisons with other products without our consent.
If you want to find the comparisions, google for "xen vs vmware benchmarks redacted" and see if you can find a copy of the unedited results.
I'll take your money! I'll put up $100 to your $2000 that the world DOES get sucked into a black hole. You may ask for your payment, should I lose, right after the Big Rip unless the Big Crunch comes first. Should the Big Crunch come first, you owe me.
in favor of the Big Crunch (Which would be a good idea for an ice cream flavor)
And no cheezy trying to squirm out of it by claiming the definition of the earth was to a more or less big single rock not a bunch of shredded atoms, our bet is on the fate of the majority of the sum of energy and matter that make up said big rock.
Protecting people from themselves isn't even really all that hard, all you do is take away all their power.
Now, politically and philosophically, I'm a freedom lover. I want people to be free to make their own mistakes, free to try new things and free to fail or excel, but when it comes to users of my network, I'm an iron fisted tyrant. No installing. No visiting websites that we haven't pre-approved. No you cannot use your flash whatchamever. Works out pretty well actually.
Maybe I should set up a business for myself: ETRUS - (Evil Tyrants -R- Us) - we keep your computer really, really safe for only dollars a day! Your computer will be re-imaged nightly and you will be protected from all the evilness of teh intertubes! (You know we're technically adept 'cause we can use lolspeak.)
And this is where AI comes in. If I could make a suggestion, the computer would be used by programmers who are really lazy, not just lazy enough to solve repetitive tasks, but lazy enough to write programs that would write programs to solve repetitive tasks. Take your average adept programmer who says, "I am too lazy to grind coffee beans, pour water and all that jazz, I'll write a program that will manage the process for me." That programmer is lazy, but a really lazy programmer is the one who studies human interaction, available components and programming languages then writes a bot to spread itself to send spam about a Russian company offering a two million dollar prize to be awarded to the best published coffee making program and then gets his new IRC buddy to figure out the logistics of spreading it for him.
Okay look, people are expensive right? I mean, buying one is expensive and all, even developing one when the starter kit is free, but renting one, and renting a talented one at that? So if you're gonna rent *hire* a really expensive human to work on a really expensive computer, you don't want him doing a bunch of grunt work, particularly when said really expensive machine is designed to do grunt work really (really, really) fast.
So what you do is get your very expensive programmer to write code for your very expensive machine that will do the work which you could have hired less expensive programmers to write. The programmer writes applications that test themselves, try variations and compare the results. Then you feed the system lots of programming tools and problems and let it sort out for you how it can best utilize its resources. Of course lots of stuff doesn't work well, maybe even most of it, but there are relatively small numbers of ways that most things can be combined, say a couple hundred million or so, and the very expensive machine can whip out those combinations, trials and comparisons while you grab a cup of coffee. After a lifetime of computing, literally minutes on such a monster, it is ready to throw massive experience and streamlined code combinations at your particular brand of personality problems, perhaps even calculating them to six significant digits for you. We're talking Eddie here, not Deep Thought, but perhaps Eddie can get you started on Deep Thought if you owe your psychiatrist that much.
Contemptuous lights flashed across the computer's console.
"I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons!" he boomed. "I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!"
Oh, and yeah, the truly lazy programmer is the one that writes up the paper that gets people with the money to sponsor such a project. He probably works at Standford University and was that guy now only vaguely remembered by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who giggles into his coffee everytime somebody says "Google it."
Buy a Ford engine. Put in in your Bluebird. No lawsuit from Nissan. No lawsuit from Ford. (The mechanic will likely sue for mental anguish.)
Sell your Nissan/Ford unholy monster for profit. Still no lawsuit from Nissan, no lawsuit from Ford. (The mechanic's psychiatrist may sue you for reckless endangerment.)
Sell dozens, hundreds and eventually thousands of Fluebirds. Not only will Nissan and Ford stubbornly persist in their selfish refusal to sue you, they might even offer to make you a retailer or give you wholesale purchase prices. (The mechanics' labor union may come round to visit with torches and pitchforks.)
If you try to sell Bluebirds with Ford engines, representing yourself as a retailer for Nissan, then you will taste the awful wrath of a swarm of lawyers. Only then do you have an accurate analogy of the issue at hand. Apple can claim that Psystar is selling a product as an Apple product, thus infringing on their right to protect their goo*cough*
that is to say slandering their guugh*choke*
their good *spasm* *sputter* *wheeze* name.
Of course, Psystar can retort that they are in fact selling Psystar computers designed to be capable of running OSX and are even installing OSX, legally purchased, on their computers for a reasonable fee. Apple may then point out that "you can't buy our software to do that" in which case Psystar can retort that "already did" and they can then commence with the slap fest. A cool headed judge could gently dissuade the two from arguing with a fire hose and explain that that forbidding people to use a product they legally purchase in such a way as to prevent competition might be considered "anticompetitive practices" and point out an interesting statute or two to the dripping Apple lawyer swarm. I'm sure the Apple lawyer swarm will accept this with the same good grace you'd expect from a bull rhino with a terrible case of hemorrhoids who was just dumped by his rhino girlfriend for a larger meaner bull rhino who has decided to make it a threesome. (This is known as the no bloody way triple analogy.)
Clarification: "A stupid tax" is a phrase that is likely going to be expected to mean the same thing as "A tax which is ill advised." I deliberately chose the wording of "tax stupidity" because it is clear. EvanED is also clear, but missing the entire point.
Those who spend a dollar a week, or even five dollars a week, are not playing the lottery in a stupid fashion, nor are they the major contributors the the hosting state's income. It is the people I have seen buying tickets in significant numbers and the people sure that they "usually beat the odds" and the people who feel they are due who are playing in a stupid fashion. Those who purchase large numbers of tickets generally do so, not because it significantly increases their entertainment value, but because they believe they will have a better shot of winning. (They do not understand the actual numbers involved.) The people who "usually beat the odds" are the ones who forget the losses they incur over time. Those who feel they are due do not understand how statistics work nor for that matter really understand that the universe does not in fact revolve around them. These are the stupid who play the lotteries, and in a stupid fashion.
State funded lotteries do some good, in my state for example, most of the revenue goes into the "general fund" of which around 80% goes to the cost of state funded education. Most states actually use the income in their budgets which in turn saves them from having to raise revenue through additional or higher taxes. The income generated has essentially the same use as would traditional tax revenue, and since it comes mostly from stupid people, it is fair to call it a tax on the stupid.
The effect on society is one of segregating wealth on an index of intelligence. Is it good that stupidity should be punished? Certainly there is some merit in encouraging people to make good decisions, but at the same time, many people are not intelligent and seem to be unable to make wise decisions, not through their own lack of effort alone, but also because of their environment and because of their physical limitations. It is, in short, harder for some people to learn than others which is really a physical handicap rather than the choice usually assumed.
What society really benefits from is productive and self sufficient citizens, regardless of intellectual prowess. If you really want to see improvements in state income, find a way to tax the lazy for laziness (which is a choice and which is also rewarded once significant levels of dedication are reached.)
Use squid with a domain based whitelist. Set/etc/resolv.conf with "nameserver 127.0.0.1" and use dnsmasq to provide dns lookup for squid, which has the added benefit of using your/etc/hosts for lookup exclusively. You then set up a script to look up each of the IPs of the desired sites automatically from an external server, probably with nslookup though there might be a more efficient method, on an hourly basis from a trusted DNS server. Dnsmasq handles your dhcp as well, adding further simplicity to the situation.
I think. You'll want to read a manual and guide along the way to get the configs right.
TFA focuses on war, but lets talk about the causes, not just the effects of war.
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.
What if instead of "disrupting their ability to tell lies when questions" were applied to political candidates instead of to soldiers? I believe there is a time and a place to wage war, but I'd be more supportive if the motives of our leaders were "filled with light" before they were elected and before we went to war. I'd like to see each political candidate for federal office asked to undergo a standard screen before they were allowed to accept any party nomination. I can even throw out a list of questions that I'd love to see the voters of the US get honest answers to:
Do you intend to protect the interests of the people of the United States?
What is your primary goal if you are elected to office?
Would you lie to the people you represent in order to achieve that goal?
Have you ever accepted bribes for political favors?
Do you really agree with your party's platform?
Do you really agree with all of the Constitution?
Is freedom or safety for the American people more important to you?
Have you lied during your campaign?
What is worth going to war over?
It might be assumed from these questions that I'm against the wars and the policies of current elected officials, but the truth is that I agree with some of the policies and actions we've seen from our representatives in the house, senate and president, I'm even proud of them from time to time. At the same time I'm terribly disappointed in their lack of consistency and the feeling I always get that there are reasons and motivations that they hide from the people they are supposed to represent. I'd love to get honest answers about their motivations.
First, no biggie, one of the first things I typically do on any windows machine where I'm going to be working for a significant length of time is jump to folder view - Advanced and check "show full path in title bar" and uncheck "hide extensions" and usually uncheck "hide system files" because I often want to change extensions and sometimes will have files with the same base name that I need to distinguish. I know what I'm messing with and I know how to make the display conform to my preferences, but the newbie doesn't.
Second, though I hesitate to defend MS, I doubt your conclusion in this particular instance:
And for what? So that the file-explorer looks a bit cleaner? Hardly because what does MS then do in detail mode, add a column to list the type that is often nothing more then just saying "this is an EXTENSION file". WHOOPEE!
In other views it saves a grand total of 4 characters at the cost of a hell of a lot of basic security.
But MS is so concerned by the clean look that for a shortcut they add ' - shortcut' a grand total of 11 characters AND a icon on top of the icon.
One of the most common problems I used to run across was users changing the extension on a file then not understanding why it didn't work as expected. Users often change file names, and with extensions hidden, they can do so without needing to understand why a file has a particular extension since they don't change it. I believe the change was made from actually paying attention to the way the average computer user made mistakes and solving one of the common ones by doing nothing more than setting a default display for the new computer user. It makes sense to make the most common mistakes less likely whenever possible for their satisfaction and to reduce support efforts.
As noted in another post, it isn't just the extension that determines how a file is handled, but for many files, such as batch files, it does determine whether or not a file is executable. This is kind of a holdover from DOS days, but they've done a variety of things with similar effect. Hiding system files with a big default warning along the lines of "You don't want to do this unless you actually know what you're doing" is one. Putting a "My Computer" icon in an obvious place is another. Even the Start button is friendly to the newbie because it is obvious where they probably want to... well start. Putting applications in "Program Files" and auto-launching applications in "Startup" makes sense to the newbie too. Contrast this type of design with my most common GUI where I want to click a Lizard or a K for no obvious reason, other than it is in a similar location to the Start button. Contrast the naming scheme of "Program Files" with/bin/usr/bin/usr/local/bin/sbin/usr/sbin/usr/local/sbin and (*gack*)/usr/bin/X11. Startup? That's in/etc/init.d or maybe/etc/rc.d or maybe I want/home/myuser/.kde/Autostart (assuming I'm still using KDE here.) Of course I might use Gnome or FluxBox instead in which case some of the rules change.
I'm comfortable on a command line, be it DOS like or Bourne like. I can read source code, use chmod with comfort and know when to use chkconfig and when to use ln -s, but MS has done the right thing when they made the assumption that the average user should be protected from obvious errors.
Or you could have spent your money on a pretty screen and paid for your OS bundle with your ISP charge. You could easily equal your computing power for less money averaged over three years and at the end of the three years you would still have a powerful cutting edge system instead of an outdated one. Obviously you aren't using most of your computing power most of the time, so shared systems might not just equal your PC power, they might easily double it or more since the same resources in place for 1000 customers would equate to essentially 900 times the processing power available on average, and with careful prioritizing, you would never notice when three of your neighbors decided to compile the Duke Nukedom pre-release beta module at the same time.
Ahh, security. Imagine a computer where you never, ever had to worry about security. I probably still would, and you probably still would, but most people would be glad to make it Somebody Else's Problem. If your OS is managed by a third party, responsible for managing the same image for a couple thousand people, then they'll probably keep it much more secure, at least on average and probably more secure than 99% of us bother to anyway. Bye-bye to zombies.
It really does come down to price. If the mid to high end business workstation right now runs around $1,500.00 and you take $200 off for the monitor, then amortize over three years, you could be paying to rent a thin client box for $33/month. If an ISP offered one with similar performance to my desktop, with a warranty, with guaranteed uptime and real security at $15/mo then it would be very tempting.
There are some real challenges, but they're not something that is impossible to overcome. I use Slax, a live CD based OS, and run it from memory a lot of the time for convenience. When I want to add software, I just plug in a module which puts the software I like in place overlaid on the base OS. The modules are saved to hard disk, and require pretty minimal storage requirements. If the OS image were stored at the ISP instead of on a CD, and it was kept constantly updated, it would be a boost over even what I use much of the time now. To improve performance, rather than downloading the full OS, the bootloader and kernel should be based off of an iSCSI lun so I'm only downloading the blocks I need rather than the full files.
That scenario assumes I want to store things locally, but if I only stored a key, I could use the disk space of the ISP with LUKS volumes encrypted and accessed via iSCSI as well at the ISP with a pretty good privacy expectation.
All of that is available now, with development effort and OSS, but the really significant benefits should be even more dazzling as the workload is offloaded into the cloud rather than requiring my machine to do the work. I come pretty close to that when I use a remote desktop from a slow machine to a fast one. The local machine can be a really old one and as long as the hosting machine is spiffy, then all the local machine needs do is display my graphics and exchange ip traffic quickly.
Who's buying? The people who are buying are the ones who are offered more power, better security and more software at a lower price than they could get buying a regular PC. Of course that's assuming that it isn't hosted at MS, but MS does have a pretty good track record of getting other companies to sell and service their products.
Oh, do feel free. Promises not to sue, just like MS, I give freely. Probably a little less scary when I do it though.
I really did think my meaning was a little more transparent than the mods seemed to think though. Once off topic though, why not explain the joke to death right? First, it should be noted that my assumption is that MS is up to something, some sort of dark magic, which is not clear. Typically when they squash competition, I see the trick, thus the "up his sleeve" or "in his hat" relevance. Second, as the parrot, I fear that MS has done something rash, in the rush to quash the competition of OSS, I suspect they decided to join the ranks of contributors, thus making their image seem a little less evil. I call it rash because I don't think that, despite statements to the contrary, they really understand that OSS isn't some marketing gimmick and think they can woo the masses with cash. I think it will come back and, well, sink their ship. I thought of the joke, an old one, because I felt like the parrot watching the MS magician do some extrodinary trick, slowly coming to the realization that it really might not accomplish the usual sleight of hand but have terrible (from their perspective) consequences in the end.
I didn't notice the weird character representation in the preview, but didn't bother to correct the error since I figured that quoting a parrot, it would do just as well for sounds that don't have ascii representations.
I do have a new theory though. I don't know the details, but my guess is that somebody lost a bet, and it went something like this: Scene: Balmer and IIS department head are on a golf course
Balmer: "Okay, if I miss this putt, I'll give you my jaguar, but if I make it, your department has to donate $100,000 annually to Apache."
Smuckly: "Seriously? Okay, but only after Gates is retired okay?" Balmer sinks the putt with an evil smile while Smuckly turns a little green.
Okay, I have to admit this confuses me. There are a lot of possibilities where MS could make investments or try to push markets, but this seems business backwards. I can't tell if it is a magic trick or the real thing.
And for the subject reference:
A magician works on a cruise ship and entertains the audience with his show. The only problem is that the captainâ(TM)s parrot has figured out all his tricks and tells them during the show. âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, Aaarrrâ âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s under his hat, itâ(TM)s under his hat, Aaarrrâ
One night the parrot starts again to tell trick. The magician pulls out a gun and shoots at the parrot. The parrot dodged the bullet; it hit a propane tank and blew the ship into a million pieces. The only two survivors are the magician and the parrot floating on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.
The parrot looks around, looks at the magician and say: âoeAaarrr, ok, you got me. Where is the ship?â
Funny. At least I hope you intended it to be funny. I'm not sure though if your choice of article or their feature on it to be so prominent is funnier.
I instead looked over lung cancer and toilet clogs, and I found it to be much closer to reading encyclopedia entries than wikipedia. I'm torn, on the one hand I see this as a great way to categorize knowledge, having wikipedia as a wide but non-authoritative source of knowledge and knol as an authoritative one would have them complement each other rather than compete with each other. On the other hand, I fear that people will choose to contribute to only one rather than both, thus stalling the momentum of wikipedia (further) and slowing the contribution rate.
On the third hand, I wonder if knol will considered a valid reference source for writing. It would be great to have such an online source if it can eventually have even a quarter of the submissions.
I'd also like to ponder whether wikipedia could do tiered levels of authority, having authors whose submissions are given more weight than the general submissions and if by doing so they could combine the knowledge systems, having content shared between systems and allowing users to use whichever interface they would prefer. I'd like to ponder it, but I ran out of hands.
I've been using data loss databases for years, MSSQL, MySQL, MS Access, yup, data loss in all of them. I was quite disappointed in reading further to discover that they meant that a database of unwanted data sharing was being maintained instead of finding out where all my missing update queries went.
If you purchase something, you own it and as an owner you can do what you like with it. This is a natural freedom that exists so long as property and ownership have meaning. When someone purchases a copy of software, they may not have the legal right to redistribute it in any form, but if they purchase property, they own property. Services are not the same thing, and the right to use a service in a way that is not agreed upon is an abuse against the person providing the service.
In the case of a EULA, or at least some EULAs, the terminology is intentionally abused to imply that a purchase of property, regardless of service provided, does not give actual ownership. The intent of the EULA in this case is to provide something that is purchased (as property) but treated as a service.
It is wrong to sell property and then try to enforce its use as if it were a service and it is also wrong to agree to purchase a product with the understanding that it will be treated as a service then disregard that understanding, particularly when it is explicitly stated that you must agree to it in order to use the product.
When both parties have done something that they should not have done, the first being the seller of the software and the second being the purchaser of the software, then nobody can be said to be morally right. When both parties are morally wrong, the case should be dismissed or both parties should be punished.
The injustice of the enforcement in this case is highlighted by the lack of the court to provide a reasonable identification of exactly what wrong had been committed. I read the article and it is clear to me that the court decided to hold the buyer and user of the software to be infringing on the rights of the seller, but calling a copy of software in RAM to be improper use clearly crosses the line into using words rather than the merit of an idea as the basis of the decision. Perhaps a clear minded judge will be called upon to reconsider this judgment and clarify that while a copy of the software was being misused according to previous agreements, it is the breaking of an agreement by the people involved rather than the method of using a computer which is wrong. If such a judge were to choose to rule that "the use by Guilder was in violation of the clear intent of the agreement made between Guilder and Blizzard" then I will still believe it is ultimately unjust, but at least believe it is a reasonable application of contract law. As the current judgment stands, words, and therefore the moral codes of the laws they represent, are misapplied.
I use the terms "person" and "you" for clarity, feel free to substitute person/entity/persons/entities as you feel the need.
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What do you do when you need to reinstall a current version of IE? You can't reinstall from the distribution CD, you can't uninstall if the installer is broken... what do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO!!!
Well, you do what every IT person since the 1970s has done when they needed a file where they couldn't download it, they put it on other media (tape, floppy, CDRW, DVDRW, ssd) and move it over, or if they're really lazy or don't have physical access they use FTP, you know, good 'ol FTP that comes with the default version of Windows, and download it with that.
I need a Windows machine at home where I run mostly Linux, I don't want to babysit it, I don't want clueless visitors to get viruses on it, so I remove IE right from the start. No biggie.
Too hard? If IE disappeared (here's to hope) then you'd see browsers, probably Safari and Firefox distributed with everything:
You want fries and Firefox with that?
I beg to differ.
An idiot would assume that failing to communicate successfully because of common associations is the fault of the listeners. If you use the word "niggardly" in your communications without considering the likely misunderstandings, then you are at fault. Likewise, if you use words that you know will be misconstrued as hateful in a group that you believe will condone such biases, but refuse to use them in a group where you assume the worst because of skin color, then yes, that does make you racist.
As a teen I was accused of being "deliberately obtuse." It cut to the bone because first, they were right, and second because I didn't know what it meant and had to look up the meaning. If I've called you a racist, I hope it cuts to the bone in the same way.
Racist doesn't only mean that you believe that people are inferior due to skin color, it also means that you believe that it is okay to assume that people react differently based solely on their skin color. If you tailor your words to avoid terms because you believe that people who are black will be offended by terms with racial associations, then you are assuming that a black person is going to be less educated than a white one.
The real ugly truth? It's still, tremendously sadly, reasonable to guess that a black person is more likely to be offended by the word "niggardly" than a white person. My country, the US, has a history of racial intolerance and racial bigotry that is embarrassing, but the sad fact is that a breakdown of education or a breakdown of ignorant offense, where either demographic is by race, will show that blacks are more likely to be offended due to poor word choices and are less educated.
Let me be absolutely clear, blacks are more likely to be ignorant and resentful than whites. It is NOT due to the color of skin; it is due to a severe sociological problem that has grouped blacks into a single sociatial group when they don't need to belong to one. That grouping has led to people from every group making false assumptions about their own race and about other races. Thankfully, this is not a natural order and has been steadily improving over the last century and with empathy and effort, it will continue to improve. One starting point, don't use the word "niggardly" outside of an educational setting. It is likely to be misconstrued as racist by many and using it fuels pointless animosity and bigotry.
Wow. I mean Whoa and wow! Thanks, I needed that. It had been a long day and being reminded that there are plenty of stupid people did me good. I immediately thought "What? Saying averages are essentially identical is somehow insinuating that one group of people is smarter than another? Idiot." I hit reply. I started marshaling my thoughts preparing to point out that it's obvious any group of people classified by skin color will have both exceptionally smart and exceptionally stupid people, but averages are a littler harder to quantify, and mostly, well, they average out.
Then I read the post again, and I then noticed that the poster said "stupider then" as if it were intended to say "stupider than" and thought, "wow, what an example right there of stupidity." Stupidity is the unwillingness to learn and nothing says "I'm stupid" more than basic grammar mistakes while errantly correcting someone else's grammar mistake."
It was then that I realized that I'm responding to someone who typified all the mistakes they criticized in a single post. I can't decide if it is an example of extreme arrogance based on stubborn stupidity or subtle and thick ironic sarcasm.
Kudos to you Tyrannicalposter, I've never before seen someone so brilliantly stupid in one line.
Reasonable point and one I didn't consider when replying. There are some other posts that point out that it does have usage clauses, but is intended to be a distribution control.
Screw it, I say. If make 'em click okay or do "Ctrl + Alt + F2". If you like we can put "[Whatever]" buttons on those places where agreement is not required since that is what most people say when they see them anyway.
Before you even get to install the OS, or use it for the first time if preinstalled, you get a prompt "This is the GPLv2 which you must agree to in order to use most of the software on this CD or system.
The eighteen tabs above represent all the other licenses required by any software on this CD. None of them will keep you from being able to use and modify the source code. None of them require any payment. You may agree to or decline them individually, or select All here. [All][Agree to GPLv2 and Next]"
Eighteen is of course, a random number I picked to represent what would require actual research on behalf of a distributor. If there are far more (unlikely) then they could be subgrouped into "Free to use, redistribute only with restrictions" and "Free to use, free to redistribute only with credits" and "Free to use, redistribution requires other arrangements."
I've seen some similar agreements required for installation of various distributions and I know there is at least one, usually more, required for installation of a Windows system. We're not talking really onerous requirements here. By getting the agreements up front, at installation, Ubuntu could cut out almost all the hassle as they decide to use other software with standard license agreements.
Oh, and not to let a nit go unpicked, ls and cd are part of bash, so even if in some crazy world you could get to the point where you had to agree to a EULA before launching bash, you wouldn't have to agree to it again to run other portions of the same program.
Most people who hear of "free software" hear it in the same context you hear about free trials, free introductory period, free fries with the purchase of a regular entree, or free beer if you sign up for our newsletter. People think of free as "meaning no payment necessary if you agree to something else." This isn't even misleading, since once they hear the "catch" is that you typically have allow redistribution of any source code you happen to write, their first thought is "what is source code?" and it's shortly followed by "suckers!"
In context, where people regularly discuss Open Source Software, the term free means "probably GPL, but maybe just some other common OSS license." For clarity, I usually refer to OSS, or even Open Source Software to make sure that people understand my intent, but expecting a community that regularly discusses GPL and Apache licensed software to switch to something more complex is a little overoptimistic.
On the good side, most OSS is Free as in price as well, and people do like free stuff.
The FUD machine? Really? Fear may be justified, Uncertainty is reasonable if trends are visibly changing, Doubt is about observing bad trends. FUD is bad if unsupported, but is it unsupported? Lets talk cases.
First, why should there be so much potential FUD? It would be ever so simple to point out some third party benchmarks to easily make the point, rather than parroting the company line, but you failed to provide a link. I find plenty of references in articles to the EULA restrictions, articles that benchmark other VM platforms, but absolutely no other third party VMWare benchmarks. None. I'm sure there are some reputable comparative benchmarks out there somewhere since "allmost all submissions get approved" but I searched again today, still nothing. Why?
The only Fear I see is that somebody will test the products and publish results. Feel free though, you can download trials and test for yourself, good luck getting permission to publish. If you want to see the version from XenSource, google cache will provide. (Search for hypervisor_performance_comparison_1_0_5_with_esx-data.pdf) Here are some highlights:
As for Doubt, VMWare stock has been pretty much tanking. ("Tanking", like "killed" is a statement of opinion, not a technical term.) Really, I don't expect this to turn around for EMC's VMWare, and apparently neither do investors. Shares have gone from $125 in 2004, to $33.95 according to Forbes. Not what I'd call marketplace confidence. The Doubt part is certainly well established.
I like to plan to get good support in five years, but will EMC really be invested in supporting it if the stock becomes worthless? An independent company might reinvent itself, but a subsidiary of EMC, probably not so much. I suppose that is Uncertainty: will VMWare still be for sale and/or supported in 5 years? If I worked for VMWare, I'd be concerned about my job. Consider those already jumping ship: Diane Greene (co-founder, CEO), Mendel Rosenblum (co-founder, visionary and scientist), Richard Sarwal (exec from Oracle who went back to Oracle), and now Paul Chan, Vice President of Product Development.
Honestly, good benchmarks and solid technical comparisons by independent parties would go a long way. I say they aren't there because the Corporate Overlords fear them and aren't driven to improve the products, just sell them, and without improvements, VMWare will die. I expect EMC will abandon VMWare rather than investing in improving it. I expect that there are no current benchmarks published because EMC doesn't want them published. Please show me that I'm wrong. Please show me that EMC isn't killing what was once a great company with good products.
Show me the numbers, somewhere besides on VMWare's site.
Being ignorant, that is to say, having little or no knowledge of a subject, does not mean that someone is incapable of learning (stupid.) I have two users I support on a regular basis who know how to do their jobs well, and complicated jobs at that, but don't know much at all about the computer they're using. One was recently quite frustrated that they weren't able to open PDF files with Word, the idea that files required specific applications to be used was a revelation. (Yeah, I might have been able to get it to work, but simple is better.) Another was only vaguely aware that they could navigate to files outside of applications, starting with My Computer was a novelty.
Both have the capacity to learn how to use their computer for more than they have, and they are both capable of doing complex work very well. That said, there is some basic knowledge that IT professionals take for granted. The concepts of files and programs is a distinction that many computer users never make. The OS is a concept that both could grasp, but neither has any motivation to learn since it doesn't help them accomplish their tasks any faster or easier. It proves a distraction in fact to learn the things that they *could* do, since actually doing those things would cut down on their production and learning how to do them would take valuable time.
Just to underscore the point, I recently put in a call to tech support for a complex application that was not functioning correctly. The subject matter was one of moving significant amounts of money that belong to other people, so we're not talking minor stuff. The support technician told me to open up "your Internet" and was quick to blame the oft maligned Microsoft Updates for the problem (and no, it was not an update at fault.) Granted, the reference to Internet Explorer, which is what they really meant, and the assumption that updates applied flawlessly to millions of computers would mysteriously make one machine malfunction did nothing to improve my assessment of their knowledge, but in the end they knew all they needed to in order to fix the issue. Their SOP was sufficient without real understanding of the underlying technology.
The computing industry is still in infancy. Like a two year old taking first steps, the industry has collectively leaned a tremendous number of things and started to make huge headway into new areas. Like a toddler, we are proud and excited and tend to think that whatever we're currently doing (cloud computing, virtualization, ajax, xml) is the coolest thing ever. Often we have no idea what we're going to be excited by next. Note that none of this is bad, but perhaps a little perspective is called for.
In the not too terribly distant future, the computer may be unimportant, the OS may be unimportant and the particular applications may be unimportant. It doesn't take a tremendous leap to imagine systems that look and feel pretty much like a browser but handle any type of content we want to throw at it and can analyze faster and better than we've grown used to expecting. Imagine an AI that could do all the tasks for you, which currently require "basic" computing knowledge. I submit that we'll soon look back on the days of files, applications and operating systems like we do now on the different types of engine building knowledge of a hundred years ago. It won't be unimportant, but users soon really won't need to know and when they don't, and they won't, it will be the most efficient tools that are used, not the best marketed.
Just a note, you won't ever see unfavorable benchmarks to VMWware, because they explicitly forbid publishing benchmarks without their authorization. Some time back (maybe a couple years now) VMWare published very biased results showing that (well Optimized) VMWare outperformed (Completely unoptimized) Xen. Xen shot back with Apples to Apples numbers where they showed that in a few special cases they were more less equal, but everywhere else Xen killed in the benchmarks. VMWare promptly threatened suit and pointed to their EULA which effectively says: Use of our product guarantees your agreement that you will not publish any comparisons with other products without our consent.
If you want to find the comparisions, google for "xen vs vmware benchmarks redacted" and see if you can find a copy of the unedited results.
I'll take your money! I'll put up $100 to your $2000 that the world DOES get sucked into a black hole. You may ask for your payment, should I lose, right after the Big Rip unless the Big Crunch comes first. Should the Big Crunch come first, you owe me.
Citations:
And no cheezy trying to squirm out of it by claiming the definition of the earth was to a more or less big single rock not a bunch of shredded atoms, our bet is on the fate of the majority of the sum of energy and matter that make up said big rock.
Protecting people from themselves isn't even really all that hard, all you do is take away all their power.
Now, politically and philosophically, I'm a freedom lover. I want people to be free to make their own mistakes, free to try new things and free to fail or excel, but when it comes to users of my network, I'm an iron fisted tyrant. No installing. No visiting websites that we haven't pre-approved. No you cannot use your flash whatchamever. Works out pretty well actually.
Maybe I should set up a business for myself: ETRUS - (Evil Tyrants -R- Us) - we keep your computer really, really safe for only dollars a day! Your computer will be re-imaged nightly and you will be protected from all the evilness of teh intertubes! (You know we're technically adept 'cause we can use lolspeak.)
And this is where AI comes in. If I could make a suggestion, the computer would be used by programmers who are really lazy, not just lazy enough to solve repetitive tasks, but lazy enough to write programs that would write programs to solve repetitive tasks. Take your average adept programmer who says, "I am too lazy to grind coffee beans, pour water and all that jazz, I'll write a program that will manage the process for me." That programmer is lazy, but a really lazy programmer is the one who studies human interaction, available components and programming languages then writes a bot to spread itself to send spam about a Russian company offering a two million dollar prize to be awarded to the best published coffee making program and then gets his new IRC buddy to figure out the logistics of spreading it for him.
Okay look, people are expensive right? I mean, buying one is expensive and all, even developing one when the starter kit is free, but renting one, and renting a talented one at that? So if you're gonna rent *hire* a really expensive human to work on a really expensive computer, you don't want him doing a bunch of grunt work, particularly when said really expensive machine is designed to do grunt work really (really, really) fast.
So what you do is get your very expensive programmer to write code for your very expensive machine that will do the work which you could have hired less expensive programmers to write. The programmer writes applications that test themselves, try variations and compare the results. Then you feed the system lots of programming tools and problems and let it sort out for you how it can best utilize its resources. Of course lots of stuff doesn't work well, maybe even most of it, but there are relatively small numbers of ways that most things can be combined, say a couple hundred million or so, and the very expensive machine can whip out those combinations, trials and comparisons while you grab a cup of coffee. After a lifetime of computing, literally minutes on such a monster, it is ready to throw massive experience and streamlined code combinations at your particular brand of personality problems, perhaps even calculating them to six significant digits for you. We're talking Eddie here, not Deep Thought, but perhaps Eddie can get you started on Deep Thought if you owe your psychiatrist that much.
Oh, and yeah, the truly lazy programmer is the one that writes up the paper that gets people with the money to sponsor such a project. He probably works at Standford University and was that guy now only vaguely remembered by Larry Page and Sergey Brin who giggles into his coffee everytime somebody says "Google it."
Buy a Ford engine. Put in in your Bluebird. No lawsuit from Nissan. No lawsuit from Ford. (The mechanic will likely sue for mental anguish.)
Sell your Nissan/Ford unholy monster for profit. Still no lawsuit from Nissan, no lawsuit from Ford. (The mechanic's psychiatrist may sue you for reckless endangerment.)
Sell dozens, hundreds and eventually thousands of Fluebirds. Not only will Nissan and Ford stubbornly persist in their selfish refusal to sue you, they might even offer to make you a retailer or give you wholesale purchase prices. (The mechanics' labor union may come round to visit with torches and pitchforks.)
If you try to sell Bluebirds with Ford engines, representing yourself as a retailer for Nissan, then you will taste the awful wrath of a swarm of lawyers. Only then do you have an accurate analogy of the issue at hand. Apple can claim that Psystar is selling a product as an Apple product, thus infringing on their right to protect their goo*cough*
that is to say slandering their guugh*choke*
their good *spasm* *sputter* *wheeze* name.
Of course, Psystar can retort that they are in fact selling Psystar computers designed to be capable of running OSX and are even installing OSX, legally purchased, on their computers for a reasonable fee. Apple may then point out that "you can't buy our software to do that" in which case Psystar can retort that "already did" and they can then commence with the slap fest. A cool headed judge could gently dissuade the two from arguing with a fire hose and explain that that forbidding people to use a product they legally purchase in such a way as to prevent competition might be considered "anticompetitive practices" and point out an interesting statute or two to the dripping Apple lawyer swarm. I'm sure the Apple lawyer swarm will accept this with the same good grace you'd expect from a bull rhino with a terrible case of hemorrhoids who was just dumped by his rhino girlfriend for a larger meaner bull rhino who has decided to make it a threesome. (This is known as the no bloody way triple analogy.)
Clarification: "A stupid tax" is a phrase that is likely going to be expected to mean the same thing as "A tax which is ill advised." I deliberately chose the wording of "tax stupidity" because it is clear. EvanED is also clear, but missing the entire point.
Those who spend a dollar a week, or even five dollars a week, are not playing the lottery in a stupid fashion, nor are they the major contributors the the hosting state's income. It is the people I have seen buying tickets in significant numbers and the people sure that they "usually beat the odds" and the people who feel they are due who are playing in a stupid fashion. Those who purchase large numbers of tickets generally do so, not because it significantly increases their entertainment value, but because they believe they will have a better shot of winning. (They do not understand the actual numbers involved.) The people who "usually beat the odds" are the ones who forget the losses they incur over time. Those who feel they are due do not understand how statistics work nor for that matter really understand that the universe does not in fact revolve around them. These are the stupid who play the lotteries, and in a stupid fashion.
State funded lotteries do some good, in my state for example, most of the revenue goes into the "general fund" of which around 80% goes to the cost of state funded education. Most states actually use the income in their budgets which in turn saves them from having to raise revenue through additional or higher taxes. The income generated has essentially the same use as would traditional tax revenue, and since it comes mostly from stupid people, it is fair to call it a tax on the stupid.
The effect on society is one of segregating wealth on an index of intelligence. Is it good that stupidity should be punished? Certainly there is some merit in encouraging people to make good decisions, but at the same time, many people are not intelligent and seem to be unable to make wise decisions, not through their own lack of effort alone, but also because of their environment and because of their physical limitations. It is, in short, harder for some people to learn than others which is really a physical handicap rather than the choice usually assumed.
What society really benefits from is productive and self sufficient citizens, regardless of intellectual prowess. If you really want to see improvements in state income, find a way to tax the lazy for laziness (which is a choice and which is also rewarded once significant levels of dedication are reached.)
Use squid with a domain based whitelist. Set /etc/resolv.conf with "nameserver 127.0.0.1" and use dnsmasq to provide dns lookup for squid, which has the added benefit of using your /etc/hosts for lookup exclusively. You then set up a script to look up each of the IPs of the desired sites automatically from an external server, probably with nslookup though there might be a more efficient method, on an hourly basis from a trusted DNS server. Dnsmasq handles your dhcp as well, adding further simplicity to the situation.
I think. You'll want to read a manual and guide along the way to get the configs right.
Actually they provide a significant form of revenue. Whoever came up with the lottery was a genius!
"Today we are announcing a state tax on stupi... er, a state lottery!"
TFA focuses on war, but lets talk about the causes, not just the effects of war.
On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with "pharmacological land mines" that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.
What if instead of "disrupting their ability to tell lies when questions" were applied to political candidates instead of to soldiers? I believe there is a time and a place to wage war, but I'd be more supportive if the motives of our leaders were "filled with light" before they were elected and before we went to war. I'd like to see each political candidate for federal office asked to undergo a standard screen before they were allowed to accept any party nomination. I can even throw out a list of questions that I'd love to see the voters of the US get honest answers to:
It might be assumed from these questions that I'm against the wars and the policies of current elected officials, but the truth is that I agree with some of the policies and actions we've seen from our representatives in the house, senate and president, I'm even proud of them from time to time. At the same time I'm terribly disappointed in their lack of consistency and the feeling I always get that there are reasons and motivations that they hide from the people they are supposed to represent. I'd love to get honest answers about their motivations.
First, no biggie, one of the first things I typically do on any windows machine where I'm going to be working for a significant length of time is jump to folder view - Advanced and check "show full path in title bar" and uncheck "hide extensions" and usually uncheck "hide system files" because I often want to change extensions and sometimes will have files with the same base name that I need to distinguish. I know what I'm messing with and I know how to make the display conform to my preferences, but the newbie doesn't.
Second, though I hesitate to defend MS, I doubt your conclusion in this particular instance:
And for what? So that the file-explorer looks a bit cleaner? Hardly because what does MS then do in detail mode, add a column to list the type that is often nothing more then just saying "this is an EXTENSION file". WHOOPEE!
In other views it saves a grand total of 4 characters at the cost of a hell of a lot of basic security.
But MS is so concerned by the clean look that for a shortcut they add ' - shortcut' a grand total of 11 characters AND a icon on top of the icon.
One of the most common problems I used to run across was users changing the extension on a file then not understanding why it didn't work as expected. Users often change file names, and with extensions hidden, they can do so without needing to understand why a file has a particular extension since they don't change it. I believe the change was made from actually paying attention to the way the average computer user made mistakes and solving one of the common ones by doing nothing more than setting a default display for the new computer user. It makes sense to make the most common mistakes less likely whenever possible for their satisfaction and to reduce support efforts.
As noted in another post, it isn't just the extension that determines how a file is handled, but for many files, such as batch files, it does determine whether or not a file is executable. This is kind of a holdover from DOS days, but they've done a variety of things with similar effect. Hiding system files with a big default warning along the lines of "You don't want to do this unless you actually know what you're doing" is one. Putting a "My Computer" icon in an obvious place is another. Even the Start button is friendly to the newbie because it is obvious where they probably want to... well start. Putting applications in "Program Files" and auto-launching applications in "Startup" makes sense to the newbie too. Contrast this type of design with my most common GUI where I want to click a Lizard or a K for no obvious reason, other than it is in a similar location to the Start button. Contrast the naming scheme of "Program Files" with /bin /usr/bin /usr/local/bin /sbin /usr/sbin /usr/local/sbin and (*gack*) /usr/bin/X11. Startup? That's in /etc/init.d or maybe /etc/rc.d or maybe I want /home/myuser/.kde/Autostart (assuming I'm still using KDE here.) Of course I might use Gnome or FluxBox instead in which case some of the rules change.
I'm comfortable on a command line, be it DOS like or Bourne like. I can read source code, use chmod with comfort and know when to use chkconfig and when to use ln -s, but MS has done the right thing when they made the assumption that the average user should be protected from obvious errors.
Or you could have spent your money on a pretty screen and paid for your OS bundle with your ISP charge. You could easily equal your computing power for less money averaged over three years and at the end of the three years you would still have a powerful cutting edge system instead of an outdated one. Obviously you aren't using most of your computing power most of the time, so shared systems might not just equal your PC power, they might easily double it or more since the same resources in place for 1000 customers would equate to essentially 900 times the processing power available on average, and with careful prioritizing, you would never notice when three of your neighbors decided to compile the Duke Nukedom pre-release beta module at the same time.
Ahh, security. Imagine a computer where you never, ever had to worry about security. I probably still would, and you probably still would, but most people would be glad to make it Somebody Else's Problem. If your OS is managed by a third party, responsible for managing the same image for a couple thousand people, then they'll probably keep it much more secure, at least on average and probably more secure than 99% of us bother to anyway. Bye-bye to zombies.
It really does come down to price. If the mid to high end business workstation right now runs around $1,500.00 and you take $200 off for the monitor, then amortize over three years, you could be paying to rent a thin client box for $33/month. If an ISP offered one with similar performance to my desktop, with a warranty, with guaranteed uptime and real security at $15/mo then it would be very tempting.
There are some real challenges, but they're not something that is impossible to overcome. I use Slax, a live CD based OS, and run it from memory a lot of the time for convenience. When I want to add software, I just plug in a module which puts the software I like in place overlaid on the base OS. The modules are saved to hard disk, and require pretty minimal storage requirements. If the OS image were stored at the ISP instead of on a CD, and it was kept constantly updated, it would be a boost over even what I use much of the time now. To improve performance, rather than downloading the full OS, the bootloader and kernel should be based off of an iSCSI lun so I'm only downloading the blocks I need rather than the full files.
That scenario assumes I want to store things locally, but if I only stored a key, I could use the disk space of the ISP with LUKS volumes encrypted and accessed via iSCSI as well at the ISP with a pretty good privacy expectation.
All of that is available now, with development effort and OSS, but the really significant benefits should be even more dazzling as the workload is offloaded into the cloud rather than requiring my machine to do the work. I come pretty close to that when I use a remote desktop from a slow machine to a fast one. The local machine can be a really old one and as long as the hosting machine is spiffy, then all the local machine needs do is display my graphics and exchange ip traffic quickly.
Who's buying? The people who are buying are the ones who are offered more power, better security and more software at a lower price than they could get buying a regular PC. Of course that's assuming that it isn't hosted at MS, but MS does have a pretty good track record of getting other companies to sell and service their products.
Oh, do feel free. Promises not to sue, just like MS, I give freely. Probably a little less scary when I do it though.
I really did think my meaning was a little more transparent than the mods seemed to think though. Once off topic though, why not explain the joke to death right? First, it should be noted that my assumption is that MS is up to something, some sort of dark magic, which is not clear. Typically when they squash competition, I see the trick, thus the "up his sleeve" or "in his hat" relevance. Second, as the parrot, I fear that MS has done something rash, in the rush to quash the competition of OSS, I suspect they decided to join the ranks of contributors, thus making their image seem a little less evil. I call it rash because I don't think that, despite statements to the contrary, they really understand that OSS isn't some marketing gimmick and think they can woo the masses with cash. I think it will come back and, well, sink their ship. I thought of the joke, an old one, because I felt like the parrot watching the MS magician do some extrodinary trick, slowly coming to the realization that it really might not accomplish the usual sleight of hand but have terrible (from their perspective) consequences in the end.
I didn't notice the weird character representation in the preview, but didn't bother to correct the error since I figured that quoting a parrot, it would do just as well for sounds that don't have ascii representations.
I do have a new theory though. I don't know the details, but my guess is that somebody lost a bet, and it went something like this:
Scene: Balmer and IIS department head are on a golf course
Balmer: "Okay, if I miss this putt, I'll give you my jaguar, but if I make it, your department has to donate $100,000 annually to Apache."
Smuckly: "Seriously? Okay, but only after Gates is retired okay?"
Balmer sinks the putt with an evil smile while Smuckly turns a little green.
Worse, copied and pasted off some random website.
As for incoherent, well, probably, the news left me befuddled at best.
Okay, I have to admit this confuses me. There are a lot of possibilities where MS could make investments or try to push markets, but this seems business backwards. I can't tell if it is a magic trick or the real thing.
And for the subject reference:
A magician works on a cruise ship and entertains the audience with his show. The only problem is that the captainâ(TM)s parrot has figured out all his tricks and tells them during the show. âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, itâ(TM)s in his sleeve, Aaarrrâ âoeAaarrr, itâ(TM)s under his hat, itâ(TM)s under his hat, Aaarrrâ
One night the parrot starts again to tell trick. The magician pulls out a gun and shoots at the parrot. The parrot dodged the bullet; it hit a propane tank and blew the ship into a million pieces. The only two survivors are the magician and the parrot floating on a piece of wood in the middle of the ocean.
The parrot looks around, looks at the magician and say: âoeAaarrr, ok, you got me. Where is the ship?â
Funny. At least I hope you intended it to be funny. I'm not sure though if your choice of article or their feature on it to be so prominent is funnier.
I instead looked over lung cancer and toilet clogs, and I found it to be much closer to reading encyclopedia entries than wikipedia. I'm torn, on the one hand I see this as a great way to categorize knowledge, having wikipedia as a wide but non-authoritative source of knowledge and knol as an authoritative one would have them complement each other rather than compete with each other. On the other hand, I fear that people will choose to contribute to only one rather than both, thus stalling the momentum of wikipedia (further) and slowing the contribution rate.
On the third hand, I wonder if knol will considered a valid reference source for writing. It would be great to have such an online source if it can eventually have even a quarter of the submissions.
I'd also like to ponder whether wikipedia could do tiered levels of authority, having authors whose submissions are given more weight than the general submissions and if by doing so they could combine the knowledge systems, having content shared between systems and allowing users to use whichever interface they would prefer. I'd like to ponder it, but I ran out of hands.
I've been using data loss databases for years, MSSQL, MySQL, MS Access, yup, data loss in all of them. I was quite disappointed in reading further to discover that they meant that a database of unwanted data sharing was being maintained instead of finding out where all my missing update queries went.
If you purchase something, you own it and as an owner you can do what you like with it. This is a natural freedom that exists so long as property and ownership have meaning. When someone purchases a copy of software, they may not have the legal right to redistribute it in any form, but if they purchase property, they own property. Services are not the same thing, and the right to use a service in a way that is not agreed upon is an abuse against the person providing the service.
In the case of a EULA, or at least some EULAs, the terminology is intentionally abused to imply that a purchase of property, regardless of service provided, does not give actual ownership. The intent of the EULA in this case is to provide something that is purchased (as property) but treated as a service.
It is wrong to sell property and then try to enforce its use as if it were a service and it is also wrong to agree to purchase a product with the understanding that it will be treated as a service then disregard that understanding, particularly when it is explicitly stated that you must agree to it in order to use the product.
When both parties have done something that they should not have done, the first being the seller of the software and the second being the purchaser of the software, then nobody can be said to be morally right. When both parties are morally wrong, the case should be dismissed or both parties should be punished.
The injustice of the enforcement in this case is highlighted by the lack of the court to provide a reasonable identification of exactly what wrong had been committed. I read the article and it is clear to me that the court decided to hold the buyer and user of the software to be infringing on the rights of the seller, but calling a copy of software in RAM to be improper use clearly crosses the line into using words rather than the merit of an idea as the basis of the decision. Perhaps a clear minded judge will be called upon to reconsider this judgment and clarify that while a copy of the software was being misused according to previous agreements, it is the breaking of an agreement by the people involved rather than the method of using a computer which is wrong. If such a judge were to choose to rule that "the use by Guilder was in violation of the clear intent of the agreement made between Guilder and Blizzard" then I will still believe it is ultimately unjust, but at least believe it is a reasonable application of contract law. As the current judgment stands, words, and therefore the moral codes of the laws they represent, are misapplied.
I use the terms "person" and "you" for clarity, feel free to substitute person/entity/persons/entities as you feel the need.