I think a lot of people need some slight perspective with regards to the recent problems that the UN has faced.
It's not overly effective in some respects (stopping invasions, oppression) but that's a fault of the countries involved not the organisation itself.
Without the UN, there might still be apartheid in South Africa. There would be lots more people starving to death. There would likely still be smallpox. Free and fair elections would be unavailable in many countries. AIDS (and tuberculosis and malaria) would be far greater problems. Those accused of warcrimes might not be tried.
While it's easy to knock the UN following recent scandals, get a sense of perspective. It's extremely difficult to coordinate things on a world scale without any real authority but the UN does do an extremely admirable job.
Whether it would handle the root servers well or not is a separate issue but don't critise out of a hand an organisation that has saved millions of lives.
Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low.
That seems a fairly ridiculous statement to make, as it's impossible to determine it one way or the other. Even measuring the number of people subsequently found not-guilty (or acquitted) is hardly likely to be accurate.
First off, I'm not American so you may wonder why I'm posting this. For my own stress relief, I guess;) But I'm sure it might hold true for others, too.
I'm becoming increasingly disappointed with the major political parties. I'm a liberal (so Lib Dem in the UK, and I guess Green Party across the pond), and up to:
"I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD)."
I was extremely interested by what David Cobb was saying.
However, he then threw in:
"And we don't need Frankenfood either."
I realise that may well be the party's views but why do the Green party have to take such a stubborn, un-scientific approach to issues such as these?
He seems to have analysed, with a fair amount of care, most of the other issues but here seems to jump to a personal, biased conclusion, which I say largely because of his willingness to stereotype GM foods with the label of 'Frankenfood'. Does he realise the majority of drugs people take (such as aspirin) are genetically modified? Does he not take his FrankenPainkillers?
How frustrating to see such an open-minded party with a large amount of sensible opinions polarise people who want to support them by taking stubborn, and (in my opinion and research) subjective rather than objective views on certain issues? I guess that I can understand the logic (and mostly agree with it) in most of his [party's] views but to see such an unfounded, illogical position is frustrating.
A lot of people say to just find the party you agree with most but I feel quite strongly about certain issues, such as GM food, and I don't think I could vote for a party with such an obvious unwillingness to actually look at the facts in this case, even if I agree with everything else they say.
I've attended a few Lan parties (small [4 people] to bigger [250]) and have often thought that the profit aim is misdirected.
Whether the rumours are true or not, it's said that some restaurants don't make any money on the food - just the drinks (especially coffee) and desserts.
In the same way, if you can have the entry cost barely covering costs and sell things (food, drinks, sleeping arrangements [fnarr], computer equipment) and hire things (like monitors) at a slight premium, it might work out well.
I realise it's more difficult because some of those things - like food/drinks/sleeping arrangements - the place where the LAN is held tends to sell their own.
I guess it's similar to razors/razor blades but for LANs get people in cheaply and then get them to buy stuff at slightly inflated prices during their time there.
That's certainly a fair point - I was disagreeing more with the grandparent's assumption that it was either less important than life/death or just that it was not a very serious issue.
1) Not every bug/hole has to be 'hacked into' - email worms, and worms that spread through cross-site scripting and browser exploits can do just as much damage, and can be caused by OS/app bugs/holes. 2) There is no way to that a company has never been hacked in to. Just becuase a company may find out that it has, there's no proof that it hasn't been. Go ask any good security consultancy. 3) Where did I draw a link between MS security and 911 (and do you mean 911 as in the emergency services, or 9/11)? 4) Who said I've never worked/am not working for a financial institution?
I guess the difference is the piracy loss is millions that is never seen - although it's a loss, it's not like everyone gives software companies money, and then pirates stuff and takes it away.
A massive market devaluation is literally peoples' investments being devalued.
To be fair, and I'm not necessarily agreeing with the grandparent, a computer bug can cause a life/death situation...airports, hospitals, etc... all use computers. Granted, they're unlikely to use untested/insecure systems (no specific OSes mentioned), and unlikely to be vulnerable through public facing ports/etc, but it is still a risk.
Secondly, even if a situation is not life/death, it can be very serious - think about business impact if every trader at a financial institution was unable to trade due to a virus/vulnerability. Millions could be wiped off the economy of major countries.
What about a couple of rules for Wikipedia content (dunno which are already in affect but the combination might stop the problem)...
* Each page must have at least one primary contact, who gets notified when changes are made (perhaps digests, each day/week).
* Check usage patterns for a page: if a page remains unchanged for a long period, and then a change is made, notify the primary contact. The theory being, that if it has remained unchanged for a long period, it's probably accurate.
While I use OpenOffice.org, instead of MS Office, I do think the author's argument is weak, in places.
Data Migration and Testing: In migrating Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice, some advanced formatting may be lost - and this is a problem, but it is unreasonable to demand this because of the fact that Microsoft does not make it's data formats public.
It may be unfair to expect the OpenOffice.org team to get 100% compatibility with a closed source product but it isn't unreasonable to demand it. As far as a corporation/business relying on MS Office is concerned, they're not going to look at the alternative and say "Oh, well, it's hard for them to have all those features" and buy them out of sympathy. It certainly is reasonable to demand it.
OpenOffice does not use Visual Basic for Applications, but has a macro language of it's own. It should be noted that Microsoft's macros are also incompatible with those of OpenOffice. Therefore, this is a valid point and would be part of a migration cost, yet one has to wonder at how complex such macros would be in a SMB.
Another poor argument: "Although ours is incompatible with yours, yours is also incompatible with ours!" For a company thinking of switching to OpenOffice.org from MS Office, the fact that OpenOffice.org won't work with their current macros could potentially be a massive deal (from my limited experience) - the fact that if they rewrote all their macros in OO.org's macro language they couldn't be used by MS Office is pretty much irrelevant.
Training: OpenOffice is, for the most part, the same as Microsoft Office XP for a user, but there are things that they will need to learn how to do differently. All things being equal, if a company's staff need formal training for OpenOffice, then they probably need it for every new version of Microsoft Office. Therefore there is a cost on both sides, and they are at least equal.
A cost on both sides does not make things "equal". Let us assume it costs a certain amount to learn a new application, but a bit less than that to learn a new version of application (for the sake of argument; I think we can agree it won't cost more). It's therefore cheaper to stick with MS Office and upgrade it occasionally, than to choose a new application.
Email client: Microsoft notes that OpenOffice lacks an email client. This, however, would take us to Mozilla, which is a standalone web browser with more features than Internet Explorer (such as tabbed browsing), and is much more secure than Microsoft Outlook as a default.
Poor argument since comparing email clients would be a whole new argument in itself.
Support: Microsoft says that there is no dedicated team for the OpenOffice suite. What Microsoft fails to realize is that the 'dedicated team' are mainly the users; OpenOffice has a community whereas Microsoft users have support groups.
Businesses do not want to have to search the internet and post to newsgroups, mailing lists and forums to find solutions. That's not to say those support methods are not very helpful but a business wants a dedicated team. This argument is like saying "Well, no, we don't have a tyre for your car but we do have some rubber, and a furnace [or whatever], so you can make a tyre yourself."
I just think this rebuttal was a bit lame; it's looking at the original article from the wrong angle. Not that I think its sentiment (that OO.org is not inferior to MS Office) is wrong; I just think the article is poor.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.caffeine-junkies.com/?mode=articles&pag e=print&id=7 seems OK, and is all on one page.
Manta
Well said.
Is this followed by the US invading the homes of the illegal file traders, before discovering that they hadn't actually traded any illegal files?
Manta
I think a lot of people need some slight perspective with regards to the recent problems that the UN has faced.
It's not overly effective in some respects (stopping invasions, oppression) but that's a fault of the countries involved not the organisation itself.
Without the UN, there might still be apartheid in South Africa. There would be lots more people starving to death. There would likely still be smallpox. Free and fair elections would be unavailable in many countries. AIDS (and tuberculosis and malaria) would be far greater problems. Those accused of warcrimes might not be tried.
While it's easy to knock the UN following recent scandals, get a sense of perspective. It's extremely difficult to coordinate things on a world scale without any real authority but the UN does do an extremely admirable job.
Whether it would handle the root servers well or not is a separate issue but don't critise out of a hand an organisation that has saved millions of lives.
Manta
Lucky for us, at least in this country (US), the # of innocent people being convicted of crimes is remarkably low.
That seems a fairly ridiculous statement to make, as it's impossible to determine it one way or the other. Even measuring the number of people subsequently found not-guilty (or acquitted) is hardly likely to be accurate.
Manta
What, lower crime and murder rates?
Damn you, grand-parent poster!
OK, http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/ t261120.html has a few working URLs for GIANT's Antispyware program (such as ftp://ftp.zcu.cz/pub/win/winsite/winxp/sysutil/GIA NTAntiSpyware.exe).
Using this (and, if it works, the crack), you can try the original version, before it was infected^wtouched by MS.
Manta
I seem to be wrong - although the page is all about GIANT Antispyware, the link seems to be for a different product.
Manta
I believe you can still download it @ http://www.tomdownload.net/download/utilities/sdtr ial-regnow.exe
a nt_antispyware.htm)
) .torrent.
:O)
(Linked from http://www.tomdownload.com/utilities/antivirus/gi
I'm downloading it now to see if it is the correct program (so don't blame me if it isn't).
There appears to be a crack on Bittorrent @ http://torrents.bi-torrent.com/giantantispyware(1
Hope those are of some help. No idea if it's the correct crack or program, though
Manta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organic
Manta
There is a difference.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3643477.stm for details.
Basically, people get more annoyed when they can only hear one side of the conversation.
Manta
Wow - that's 14% down on last year.
Manta
First off, I'm not American so you may wonder why I'm posting this. For my own stress relief, I guess ;) But I'm sure it might hold true for others, too.
I'm becoming increasingly disappointed with the major political parties. I'm a liberal (so Lib Dem in the UK, and I guess Green Party across the pond), and up to:
"I am happy to say that our website is open source (Plone/Zope, running on BSD)."
I was extremely interested by what David Cobb was saying.
However, he then threw in:
"And we don't need Frankenfood either."
I realise that may well be the party's views but why do the Green party have to take such a stubborn, un-scientific approach to issues such as these?
He seems to have analysed, with a fair amount of care, most of the other issues but here seems to jump to a personal, biased conclusion, which I say largely because of his willingness to stereotype GM foods with the label of 'Frankenfood'.
Does he realise the majority of drugs people take (such as aspirin) are genetically modified? Does he not take his FrankenPainkillers?
How frustrating to see such an open-minded party with a large amount of sensible opinions polarise people who want to support them by taking stubborn, and (in my opinion and research) subjective rather than objective views on certain issues? I guess that I can understand the logic (and mostly agree with it) in most of his [party's] views but to see such an unfounded, illogical position is frustrating.
A lot of people say to just find the party you agree with most but I feel quite strongly about certain issues, such as GM food, and I don't think I could vote for a party with such an obvious unwillingness to actually look at the facts in this case, even if I agree with everything else they say.
Manta
I've attended a few Lan parties (small [4 people] to bigger [250]) and have often thought that the profit aim is misdirected.
Whether the rumours are true or not, it's said that some restaurants don't make any money on the food - just the drinks (especially coffee) and desserts.
In the same way, if you can have the entry cost barely covering costs and sell things (food, drinks, sleeping arrangements [fnarr], computer equipment) and hire things (like monitors) at a slight premium, it might work out well.
I realise it's more difficult because some of those things - like food/drinks/sleeping arrangements - the place where the LAN is held tends to sell their own.
I guess it's similar to razors/razor blades but for LANs get people in cheaply and then get them to buy stuff at slightly inflated prices during their time there.
Manta
That's certainly a fair point - I was disagreeing more with the grandparent's assumption that it was either less important than life/death or just that it was not a very serious issue.
Manta
I have 4 issues with your post:
1) Not every bug/hole has to be 'hacked into' - email worms, and worms that spread through cross-site scripting and browser exploits can do just as much damage, and can be caused by OS/app bugs/holes.
2) There is no way to that a company has never been hacked in to. Just becuase a company may find out that it has, there's no proof that it hasn't been. Go ask any good security consultancy.
3) Where did I draw a link between MS security and 911 (and do you mean 911 as in the emergency services, or 9/11)?
4) Who said I've never worked/am not working for a financial institution?
Manta
I guess the difference is the piracy loss is millions that is never seen - although it's a loss, it's not like everyone gives software companies money, and then pirates stuff and takes it away.
A massive market devaluation is literally peoples' investments being devalued.
Manta
To be fair, and I'm not necessarily agreeing with the grandparent, a computer bug can cause a life/death situation...airports, hospitals, etc... all use computers. Granted, they're unlikely to use untested/insecure systems (no specific OSes mentioned), and unlikely to be vulnerable through public facing ports/etc, but it is still a risk.
Secondly, even if a situation is not life/death, it can be very serious - think about business impact if every trader at a financial institution was unable to trade due to a virus/vulnerability.
Millions could be wiped off the economy of major countries.
Manta
How long til Debian stable gets banana-wumpus-6.5? ;O)
Manta
What about a couple of rules for Wikipedia content (dunno which are already in affect but the combination might stop the problem)...
* Each page must have at least one primary contact, who gets notified when changes are made (perhaps digests, each day/week).
* Check usage patterns for a page: if a page remains unchanged for a long period, and then a change is made, notify the primary contact. The theory being, that if it has remained unchanged for a long period, it's probably accurate.
Manta
Surely they'd run Windows, since missiles *are* designed to crash, and all...
Thank you, thank you. Hear all weak. Tip the waitress.
Manta
While I use OpenOffice.org, instead of MS Office, I do think the author's argument is weak, in places.
Data Migration and Testing: In migrating Microsoft Office documents to OpenOffice, some advanced formatting may be lost - and this is a problem, but it is unreasonable to demand this because of the fact that Microsoft does not make it's data formats public.
It may be unfair to expect the OpenOffice.org team to get 100% compatibility with a closed source product but it isn't unreasonable to demand it. As far as a corporation/business relying on MS Office is concerned, they're not going to look at the alternative and say "Oh, well, it's hard for them to have all those features" and buy them out of sympathy. It certainly is reasonable to demand it.
OpenOffice does not use Visual Basic for Applications, but has a macro language of it's own. It should be noted that Microsoft's macros are also incompatible with those of OpenOffice. Therefore, this is a valid point and would be part of a migration cost, yet one has to wonder at how complex such macros would be in a SMB.
Another poor argument: "Although ours is incompatible with yours, yours is also incompatible with ours!" For a company thinking of switching to OpenOffice.org from MS Office, the fact that OpenOffice.org won't work with their current macros could potentially be a massive deal (from my limited experience) - the fact that if they rewrote all their macros in OO.org's macro language they couldn't be used by MS Office is pretty much irrelevant.
Training: OpenOffice is, for the most part, the same as Microsoft Office XP for a user, but there are things that they will need to learn how to do differently. All things being equal, if a company's staff need formal training for OpenOffice, then they probably need it for every new version of Microsoft Office. Therefore there is a cost on both sides, and they are at least equal.
A cost on both sides does not make things "equal". Let us assume it costs a certain amount to learn a new application, but a bit less than that to learn a new version of application (for the sake of argument; I think we can agree it won't cost more). It's therefore cheaper to stick with MS Office and upgrade it occasionally, than to choose a new application.
Email client: Microsoft notes that OpenOffice lacks an email client. This, however, would take us to Mozilla, which is a standalone web browser with more features than Internet Explorer (such as tabbed browsing), and is much more secure than Microsoft Outlook as a default.
Poor argument since comparing email clients would be a whole new argument in itself.
Support: Microsoft says that there is no dedicated team for the OpenOffice suite. What Microsoft fails to realize is that the 'dedicated team' are mainly the users; OpenOffice has a community whereas Microsoft users have support groups.
Businesses do not want to have to search the internet and post to newsgroups, mailing lists and forums to find solutions. That's not to say those support methods are not very helpful but a business wants a dedicated team. This argument is like saying "Well, no, we don't have a tyre for your car but we do have some rubber, and a furnace [or whatever], so you can make a tyre yourself."
I just think this rebuttal was a bit lame; it's looking at the original article from the wrong angle. Not that I think its sentiment (that OO.org is not inferior to MS Office) is wrong; I just think the article is poor.
Manta
That's not actually true.
.torrent.
Try use Azureus - you can pick which files to download from a
Manta
...and it could be called Servix.
Oh - wait...
Manta
Manta