I don't know if this has been already mentioned, but it's been my experience that ExamSoft (a critical program for Law Students) produced by SoftTest is incompatable with Vista. This is causing a lot of problems, at least at the Law School I work at, as we require all our students to own a laptop. While we do have recommendations posted, includign a warning to only buy computers with XP Pro, people don't always read them. If they buy a laptop with Vist installed, they end up not being able to use it for school or the bar exam (their finals and the bar exam both require ExamSoft). Those unlucky students are forced to handwrite their exams - not plesant. It's getting tedious for us as the students keep showing up, yelling at us: "I paid how much for the latest laptop and now you're telling me I can use it at school?!?"
To be fair, this is as much problem with SoftTest as it is with Microsoft. What makes it dificult, however, is that we used to have an XP Pro site license, so anyone with an unsupported OS could have XP Pro installed free of charge. Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, however, saw fit to "upgrade" our site license to a Vista one. Now, we legally are no longer able to downgrade people's machines. When we complained to Microsoft about this, their response was that they wanted to "encourage" their large, volume license customers to upgrade so we can experience all the "benefits" associated with Vista!
As a side note, our print-quota software doesn't work with Vista, yet, either. Needless to say, we're very unhappy and sinc Vista was released... the number of Macs in the building has skyrocketed. Granted, the new Mac users still need to aquire a copy of XP Pro, but... they're usually expecting to have to buy it elsewhere and have us install it via BootCamp. The Vista users, however, are pissed about spending lots of money on a new laptop and then having to spend more to "cripple" it by downgrading to XP.
While the blame does lie primarially with SoftTest and our printer quota software, it is unconcionable that Microsoft is not willign to work with us and let us continue to offer XP so that the students can use the School-critical software on their new laptops!
I think you inadvertantly answered yourself in your question.
What do I mean? Well, consider this paraphrasing of your post: "Small states equipment sucks compared to US or NATO hardware." and "Russia and China pose little threat to the US or Europe." and "US tanks are better than all other tanks, except other NATO tanks like Germany and Brittish ones."
So, according to you, the small states are out, and Russia and China are out (Although, I would disagree with that.) leaving noone for the US or Europe to fight. Are you seeing where I'm going yet?
It's simple, really. In oh so many ways, the EU is becoming a powerful meta-state. If any state or meta-state has the economic and political ability to challenge the US, it is Europe. Now that a US/Europe alliance is no longer needed to counter the USSR and now that the US's leadership has adopted a screw everyone else in the name of padding Haliburton/KBR's pockets mindset, being competition to the US is looking more and more attractive.
A unipolar system is only stable when it is not an opressive, hirearchical system, but rather a cooperative confederation of equals (a liberal as opposed realist framework, if you will). A bipolar system is much more stable in many cases than the kind of autocratic, pax-Americana style unipolar system that the current American leadership seems to be trying to force.
So, who has the economic power, the political stability and the potential to develop a military might strong enough to act as a balance to US hegemony? Only the EU - assuming the member states are willing to relinquish enough of their internal and foreign-policy control. That has been the sticking-point, so far, as nationalism runs deep in Olde Europe.
Personally, I see the future of Global Politics as somewhat of a radical realignment into a tripolar system with the US, the EU and the PRC as the three main actors. I predict that in the short-term, as the US becomes more aggressive, the EU and the PRC will forge closer ties as one of the ways a tripolar system remains stable is when the sum of two of the actors power is roughly equal to that of the third. The scary thing, for me, is what will happen if/when the EU and the PRC each become powerful enough in their own right that they no longer need eachother to ballance out the US? Tripolar systems comprised of three near-equal powers are among the least stable.
Long-winded rant aside, this 'development', as it were (although it has been around for a few months now), simply feeds my belief that the EU (or a subset of its member states) is positioning itself to not just economically, but also militarially, challenge US dominance. As you implied in your post, the only real competition for these new ships would be the US navy!
Seriously, though. It's sad commentary on the state a car company was in pre-merger when one can say (with a straight face, no less) that the company became *more* reliable after being bought by Ford.
It was designed to be easily uninstall-able (listed in Add/Remove Programs, not leave cruft behind, etc). Furthermore, the authors of the patch recommend that you uninstall their patch before installing the official fix (assuming Microsoft ever gets it out the door).
'Course the beauty of it is that many pre-built computers don't come with floppy drives any more.
Then again, everyone should build their own computer, right? Wrong! Many people either do not have the skills to build their own PC, do not have the time to build their own PC or want a Laptop (try building a laptop. Go ahead, just try it! I dare you!)
But the above people probably shouldn't be flashing their BIOS or installing RAID and/or SATA drivers, right? Wrong! Especially with Dell Customer Suport (the kind for Ma, Pa and SMB owner), their second favorite 'fix' when a computer starts acting funny is to update the BIOS - second only to reinstalling Windows.
But anyways, unless you want a 'desktop replacement' laptop (Why not just save the money and go with a desktop at that point?), chances are it will not have a floppy drive or a bay to install one in.
Also, many desktops come without floppies now, also. (Dell, HP, etc.) The crazy thing is taht you can 'add a floppy' on the BTO machines for about $30... except it's not really added. It usually is a cheap USB floppy shipped along with the desktop. Oh, and several of the many different Dells I've had to support over the years have not had BIOS level support for the USB floppys they shipped with the desktops. Catch-22, anyone?
This is not a new issue, either. My laptop is three years old, and it didn't come with a floppy drive. Heck, there wasn't even a option to add one and no FDC onboard. Of course, several months after I bought it, I was having problems with booting from CD, and the tech support (Not Dell. I would *never* buy from Dell.) told me that was a known issue that had been fixed in a leter rev. of the BIOS. They suggested I simply download the latest BIOS updater from their website, and run it. It would make a bootable floppy that would automagically update the BIOS. When I pointed out how that model laptop had no floppy drive, they were rather stumped. As the older rev. of the BIOS didn't support USB floppies either (Not just a Dell problem.), I ended up having to send the laptop into their service center to get it updated. Of course, they *did* pay for next-day air with door-to-door service both ways, which meant I only was without my laptop for two days. (It was especially impressive as, at that time in my life, I was living in a very rural area that was about 80 miles from the closest FedEx.)
But anyways, I totally empathise with your situation.
It's not just games that need Admin credentials to run. Lots of software companies ignore LUA and require their Windows software to run as Admin. The two examples that come to mind are Quickbooks and the ATI DVD player. Now, there is a registry hack that lets Quickbooks run LUA, but it is a) unsupported and b) virtually impossible for non-geeks to understand how to implement. As for the ATI DVD player, well... I discovered this when I set up a LUA user 'Public' on my living room PC, so that guests could surf the web, play music and DVDs without having Admin rights on the computer. Everything worked except the DVD player, I called ATI tech support, explained the problem and was told (by a very snotty frenchman) that ATI only supported their software when running as an Administrator. He further 'explained' to me that the DVD player not working was a) my fault for trying to run it using restricted permissions and b) Microsoft's fault for offering users the choice to use a computer without administrative permissions.
Needless to say, my next video card will not be from ATI.
Ranting aside, it seems to me that Microsoft shot itself in the foot with this one. Yes, it is possible to run LUA on Windows and Microsoft best practices whitepapers do advocate writing for restricted permissions. Then they turn around and give all new users administrative bits*, combine that with all users always having administrative bits in previous versions of Windows (95, 98, ME), and you get developers who have been forced into the mindset of writing applications for Admin only. Don't believe me? Look at Apple. like the one-button mouse forcing good UI design, new users not being root by default and having to sudo every time you need root bits forces application designers to plan for LUA. In turn, the majority of applications for the Mac (including those that play DVDs or are written by Intuit) run with restricted credentials.
So the thirty second summary: Granted, both Windows and OSX allow LUA. The design of Windows, however, has trained designers to ignore security best practices and write for Administrative users only. Because fo this, LUA effectively does not exist for Windows home users. That, and it's not just brain-dead game makers - in order to use useful/worthwhile/important** software on Windows, you often need to be Admin. This, in turn, makes it so that Windows computers effectively are only useful if you're Admin.
Just my two cents.
-eak
* I say Home Uesrs because this really only applies to stand-alone machines. Once you get to SBS domains, your user templates encourage LUA, and if you're setting up an enterprise domain... Well, if you don't understand/implement LUA, you're not qualified to implement said domain. Then again, I would argue that the majority of compromised Windows machines are those of Joe Home User.
** Anyone who thinks games are as useful/worthwhile/important as, say, financial software really needs to get out of Mommy's basement more often.
Despite your very hostile (dare I say troll-ish) attitude to the people who have responded to you, I feel compelled to take your bait and try and explain why I feel that having a browser monopoly (even an open source one) is a problem.
See, you seem to think that if there was one supreme browser that was open sourced, everything would be groovy. I have news for you... there's this little thing called the 90% problem. More specifically, the problem with a lot of open source software is that it gets mostly finished (to the point where it is usable for the average geek - not for 'Joe Sixpack') and then the developers go on to other, more interesting projects. See, they're not being compensated for their time, so they want to work on what is 'fun' or 'exciting' instead of fixing the last couple of problems with a piece of software. Now, a non-open source company, like Opera, has a financial incentive to write that last 10%, however, a group of open source developers, like those working on Firefox, who are not getting paid to write user-friendly code, have virtually no incentive to go the 'last mile'. Plus, paid developers have to listen to their users, or they risk alienating their customers. Open Source developers are free to be horribly rude to their users and can ignore usability problems (becasue they feel that the way *they* use the software is the only correct way*) becuase they have no financial incentive to listen to their users.
Now, you're probably going to post a rude reply about how I must simply be a Microsoft apologist because I don't worship FireFox. To try and prevent that (not that it'll do any good), I would like to state that I believe that having multiple open source and closed source browsers all competing in the marketplace is the best way to spur innovation. Also, all things being equal, I will always pick open source software over *equal* closed source wares.
Finally, as someone who has been doing web development since Mosaic reigned supreme, it is my opinion that the current browser that is the closest to w3c compliance is Opera. Granted, it might not display everything quite the way you expect it to display (or quite the way it displays in FireFox), but before you start pointing and screaming about how Opera sucks, and FireFox is more compliant... go back and re-read the actual standards (you *have* read them thoroughly, haven't you?). Most of the time, I think you will find that Opera is actually conforming to the published standards, and that what you thought it *should* look like is actually due to a mis-reading of the standards (or possibly due to a false expectation, based upon FireFox's mis-rendering).
Bah... I'm really not anti-FireFox, despite the tone fo this post. I just get annoyed when people assume that FireFox (or even open source in general) is always the best. That mentality is almost as bad the people who think IE is the internet!
All of that said, I'm *still* waiting for any browser other than IE5+ or NS4 to support embedded fonts! =)
* I realize the tone of this is a tad bitter - I had a horrible experience when I submitted a FireFox bug a few months ago. Basically, FireFox was not following a w3c xhtml specification and when I submitted the bug, I got rudly told that the developers felt that the w3c's spec was not the right way to implement something, so FireFox would not be following that particular spec... Oh, and by the way: How dare I question the wisdom of the mighty and always-correct FireFox developers. Needless to say, I now consider FireFox my browser of last resort!
I find it weird that the open source community cries 'troll' when they read this comment.
Seriously. I normally don't gripe about moderation, but this particular one just bugs me.
Personally, I agree with the parent. Now I am going to be cynical for a moment: Perhaps the reason this is marked 'troll' is because it is one of the few *rational* posts and a rational post about Microsoft isn't cool enough for the average Slashdot mod. Ok, now that I'm done being sarcastic, I have to add that piss-poor mods like this one are one reason I find myself avoiding Slashdot in favor of less biased news communities.
For the record: I think it'd be great to have a bi-partisan (to use a political term) study comparing the relative merits of Open Source and Microsoft products. Of course, almost everyone here would hate it. The Microsofties would be upset because it would show that OSS is better in some areas. The OSS zealots would be be upset because the would show that OSS is NOT better in some areas. The Apple fanboys would be upset because the study would probably not include OSX. Those few of us who truly believe there are pros and cons to all of the above (and other) offerings and that you should simply choose the best tool for your particular job - well, we will get even more disgusted by Slashdot.
Of course, by saying this... I've just committed Karmic suicide, but dammit! It needed to be said.
Extrapolating what you are saying... It is ok to throw red paint on someone wearing leather shoes because leather is bad and without feeling the pain, that person will not switch to non-leather shoes. (I just got back from the theater and the Animal Rights Activists were out in force!)
What if I am wearing fake leather shoes that look real? Obviously I am only hiding the fact that I am a closet animal-killer, and even if I am not... Well, My shoe manufacturere probably makes some shoes out of leather so I am not really an innocent and should "feel the pain" until I see the error of my ways.
Note: If you are a SysAdmin and actually agree with the above sentince... lets just say it makes me ashamed to be in the same industry as you.
I could have written that post. (Though, if I did, I would have not posted anonymously.)
I hate RBLs with a passion. Let me relate something that happened to me (In small enough words that these *BL loving people might actually understand):
I used to live in a small town. Very small. One ISP total. One. They subscribed to a blacklist. I stopped getting legitimate email. I asked them to whitelist the email addresses. They refused, saying that I would have to speak with the black-listers themselves. I was refered to MAPS and ORBL. I could not even get ahold of anyone at ORBL and they never answered my emails. I was eventually able to get ahold of someone at MAPS who was probably the rudest person I have ever talked to. Even ruder than Verizon's billing department when you find an error in a bill. I got accused of being a spammer who was trying to get my ip off their list. I was told I would just have to wait until the problem was resolved, there was nothing I could do. It took nearly two months before I received email from that particular email address. Every step of the way, the people at MAPS were unhelpful and rude.
Note, my IP address was NOT EVEN IN THE BLOCKED RANGE. Heck, I was not even affiliated with the ISP that had been blocked. Still, I was harmed by the *BLs assinine actions.
Sure, I could have changes ISPs, but wait... There were no others in my area. (Thank God I have since moved to a more metropolitan area.)
Well, the sender of the email could have phoned me, right? The sender was my cousin who was working in an international school ont he other side of the world (Litterally). Do you know how much a phone call from Switzerland to costs? Plus the time difference is a killer. Sure, they could have snail-mailed me, but that takes weeks, and at least one of the messages was pretty darned time-sensative. (He had to have an emergency operation, and wanted me to know that he had survived it.) Sure, I want to wait two weeks to hear if he is alive.
So what should I do? Oh, I know... Call MAPS, let them know what is up, and they will help me (the innocent end user) fix it. Nope, I tried that, got accused of being a spammer and verbally abused.
All I can say is that now that I am in a policy-making position for my company, we will never use a *BL *and* we recommend to our clients to avoid them also. In my professional opinion, these 'services' lack the credibility and accountability to make them usefull to *any* business and it boggles my mind that any PHB let alone any geek worth his or her caffiene would ever consider using them. *BLs are truely worse than the problem they claim to help fix.
So far there have been a lot of analogies about *BLs, here is my contribution. *BLs are a lot like your local phone company not letting your Aunt Mildred in Portland connect to your telephone because her neighbor's kid made one prank phonecall a month ago.
At this point in life I supervise the administration of several hundred mail servers and none of them rely on *BLs. We use a variety of other filtering techniques that end up keeping the spam at virtually zero, with almost no false positives. Furthermore, we offer each and every user the opportunity to review every message sent to their account and to flag false-positives so that those addresses can be whitelisted.
It is not perfect, but there are plenty of ways to virtually eliminate spam without the abusive and myopic tactics of *BLs.
Bull.
There is such a thing as embedded fonts in web-pages. There are two formats the cross-browser (Netscape 4.x and all IEs) TrueDoc format and the Internet Explorer only OpenType (Developed jointly by Microsoft and Adobe). However, Netscape effectively killed the TrueDoc format in Netscape 6 and 7, so...
Speaking as a web developer, I'm a tad pissed at Netscape, because embedded fonts let you have more complete controll over the formatting of the web-page.
FWIW: I think there is a W3C proposal for an embedded font standard, but I'm not recalling what the current status of the proposal is.
And what percent of France's energy mix comes from nuclear power?* I thought so. Not that I'm defending Europe, or France, just pointing out that blanket generalizations suck.
No, ResNet was _wired_ by idiots, the people who run it just are trying ot make due with a woefully inadequate infrastructure/budget. Can anyone say 10 Mbit *Shared* between all the dorms? I knew you could. Shared ethernet in one dorm is bad enough, but between the entire on-campus student population?
Eak
SO everyone who buys a hamburger at McDonalds should only be able to get a Big Mac, because otherwise the pace of hamburger innovation would be halted? (But what about those of us who can afford a cheesburger a day, but can't afford a big mac a day?)
Just some food for thought!
I'm off to lunch,
Eak
I really don't see why this is a bad thing. My DSL provider (Verizon) has done this type of pricing for some time now. My line will support up to 1.5M/384K or 768K/768K. I have a choice of speeds from 768K/128K (basic - ~$40/month w/out ISP) to 768K/768K (premium = ~$70/month w/out ISP). I'm a poor college student, so I went with the cheepest package, giving me the always-on service that I need (for my mail server) and faster downloads than the dialup I'm coming from. (Oh and due to the massive f*ck-ege that is ResNet, I'll be getting faster connections than my mates in the dorms.) Now I just wish anything other than Verizon DSL was available in my area, as I'm paying almost $60 a month for the "basic" service ($40 plus ISP charges). I'd go for just about anyone else over Verizon, even if it were more expensive, just because Verizon really screwed me over last year. However, as long as they have a monopoly on broadband services in my area (no cable modems, no wireless, no alternate telecos, only Verizon), I'll continue to pay their over-inflated rates. But as long as there is at least one competing broadband provider, I fail to see why this type of pricing is A Bad Thing(TM). Eak
Well, I have a HP laptop, and it did not come with a floppy. The interestig part is when you want to flash your BIOS, the updater requires that it run off a floppy. Which, I may add, is the only time I've used a floppy drive so far. (Lets hear it for mini CD-RWs! Size of a floppy, but with ~200MB storage.) -eak
When I purchaced my HP laptop earlier this year it came with a default install of MS Works 6.0, but I was given the option of upgrading to WordPerfect Office 2002 (for somehting like $60), or Ofice XP Standard (about $150?), or Office XP SBE (for a godawful sum of money). As I was going to be installing OpenOffice anyways, I went with the default of Works. However, a quick check of the HPShopping Website doesn't show the option any more. (Looks like you're stuck with just Works for laptops and Works or Office Standard/SBE for desktops. Too bad, really. WordPerfect Office 2002 isn't too shabby. (Now if only they could get CorelCentral to talk to my SSL-enabled IMAP server, I'd be sold. =)
Slashdot Mirror
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2007/09/13/judo_robber/ You were saying?
Damn.
It's been so long since I've posted on Slashdot, I forgot that I have hard-code line and paragraph breaks. My bad! Sorry!
I don't know if this has been already mentioned, but it's been my experience that ExamSoft (a critical program for Law Students) produced by SoftTest is incompatable with Vista. This is causing a lot of problems, at least at the Law School I work at, as we require all our students to own a laptop. While we do have recommendations posted, includign a warning to only buy computers with XP Pro, people don't always read them. If they buy a laptop with Vist installed, they end up not being able to use it for school or the bar exam (their finals and the bar exam both require ExamSoft). Those unlucky students are forced to handwrite their exams - not plesant. It's getting tedious for us as the students keep showing up, yelling at us: "I paid how much for the latest laptop and now you're telling me I can use it at school?!?" To be fair, this is as much problem with SoftTest as it is with Microsoft. What makes it dificult, however, is that we used to have an XP Pro site license, so anyone with an unsupported OS could have XP Pro installed free of charge. Microsoft, in their infinate wisdom, however, saw fit to "upgrade" our site license to a Vista one. Now, we legally are no longer able to downgrade people's machines. When we complained to Microsoft about this, their response was that they wanted to "encourage" their large, volume license customers to upgrade so we can experience all the "benefits" associated with Vista! As a side note, our print-quota software doesn't work with Vista, yet, either. Needless to say, we're very unhappy and sinc Vista was released... the number of Macs in the building has skyrocketed. Granted, the new Mac users still need to aquire a copy of XP Pro, but... they're usually expecting to have to buy it elsewhere and have us install it via BootCamp. The Vista users, however, are pissed about spending lots of money on a new laptop and then having to spend more to "cripple" it by downgrading to XP. While the blame does lie primarially with SoftTest and our printer quota software, it is unconcionable that Microsoft is not willign to work with us and let us continue to offer XP so that the students can use the School-critical software on their new laptops!
I think you inadvertantly answered yourself in your question.
What do I mean? Well, consider this paraphrasing of your post: "Small states equipment sucks compared to US or NATO hardware." and "Russia and China pose little threat to the US or Europe." and "US tanks are better than all other tanks, except other NATO tanks like Germany and Brittish ones."
So, according to you, the small states are out, and Russia and China are out (Although, I would disagree with that.) leaving noone for the US or Europe to fight. Are you seeing where I'm going yet?
It's simple, really. In oh so many ways, the EU is becoming a powerful meta-state. If any state or meta-state has the economic and political ability to challenge the US, it is Europe. Now that a US/Europe alliance is no longer needed to counter the USSR and now that the US's leadership has adopted a screw everyone else in the name of padding Haliburton/KBR's pockets mindset, being competition to the US is looking more and more attractive.
A unipolar system is only stable when it is not an opressive, hirearchical system, but rather a cooperative confederation of equals (a liberal as opposed realist framework, if you will). A bipolar system is much more stable in many cases than the kind of autocratic, pax-Americana style unipolar system that the current American leadership seems to be trying to force.
So, who has the economic power, the political stability and the potential to develop a military might strong enough to act as a balance to US hegemony? Only the EU - assuming the member states are willing to relinquish enough of their internal and foreign-policy control. That has been the sticking-point, so far, as nationalism runs deep in Olde Europe.
Personally, I see the future of Global Politics as somewhat of a radical realignment into a tripolar system with the US, the EU and the PRC as the three main actors. I predict that in the short-term, as the US becomes more aggressive, the EU and the PRC will forge closer ties as one of the ways a tripolar system remains stable is when the sum of two of the actors power is roughly equal to that of the third. The scary thing, for me, is what will happen if/when the EU and the PRC each become powerful enough in their own right that they no longer need eachother to ballance out the US? Tripolar systems comprised of three near-equal powers are among the least stable.
Long-winded rant aside, this 'development', as it were (although it has been around for a few months now), simply feeds my belief that the EU (or a subset of its member states) is positioning itself to not just economically, but also militarially, challenge US dominance. As you implied in your post, the only real competition for these new ships would be the US navy!
Ford... Reliable... World... Breaking...
Seriously, though. It's sad commentary on the state a car company was in pre-merger when one can say (with a straight face, no less) that the company became *more* reliable after being bought by Ford.
Of course, you did say somewhat. =)
No.
It was designed to be easily uninstall-able (listed in Add/Remove Programs, not leave cruft behind, etc). Furthermore, the authors of the patch recommend that you uninstall their patch before installing the official fix (assuming Microsoft ever gets it out the door).
'Course the beauty of it is that many pre-built computers don't come with floppy drives any more.
Then again, everyone should build their own computer, right?
Wrong! Many people either do not have the skills to build their own PC, do not have the time to build their own PC or want a Laptop (try building a laptop. Go ahead, just try it! I dare you!)
But the above people probably shouldn't be flashing their BIOS or installing RAID and/or SATA drivers, right?
Wrong! Especially with Dell Customer Suport (the kind for Ma, Pa and SMB owner), their second favorite 'fix' when a computer starts acting funny is to update the BIOS - second only to reinstalling Windows.
But anyways, unless you want a 'desktop replacement' laptop (Why not just save the money and go with a desktop at that point?), chances are it will not have a floppy drive or a bay to install one in.
Also, many desktops come without floppies now, also. (Dell, HP, etc.) The crazy thing is taht you can 'add a floppy' on the BTO machines for about $30... except it's not really added. It usually is a cheap USB floppy shipped along with the desktop. Oh, and several of the many different Dells I've had to support over the years have not had BIOS level support for the USB floppys they shipped with the desktops. Catch-22, anyone?
This is not a new issue, either. My laptop is three years old, and it didn't come with a floppy drive. Heck, there wasn't even a option to add one and no FDC onboard. Of course, several months after I bought it, I was having problems with booting from CD, and the tech support (Not Dell. I would *never* buy from Dell.) told me that was a known issue that had been fixed in a leter rev. of the BIOS. They suggested I simply download the latest BIOS updater from their website, and run it. It would make a bootable floppy that would automagically update the BIOS. When I pointed out how that model laptop had no floppy drive, they were rather stumped. As the older rev. of the BIOS didn't support USB floppies either (Not just a Dell problem.), I ended up having to send the laptop into their service center to get it updated. Of course, they *did* pay for next-day air with door-to-door service both ways, which meant I only was without my laptop for two days. (It was especially impressive as, at that time in my life, I was living in a very rural area that was about 80 miles from the closest FedEx.)
But anyways, I totally empathise with your situation.
It's not just games that need Admin credentials to run. Lots of software companies ignore LUA and require their Windows software to run as Admin. The two examples that come to mind are Quickbooks and the ATI DVD player. Now, there is a registry hack that lets Quickbooks run LUA, but it is a) unsupported and b) virtually impossible for non-geeks to understand how to implement. As for the ATI DVD player, well... I discovered this when I set up a LUA user 'Public' on my living room PC, so that guests could surf the web, play music and DVDs without having Admin rights on the computer. Everything worked except the DVD player, I called ATI tech support, explained the problem and was told (by a very snotty frenchman) that ATI only supported their software when running as an Administrator. He further 'explained' to me that the DVD player not working was a) my fault for trying to run it using restricted permissions and b) Microsoft's fault for offering users the choice to use a computer without administrative permissions.
Needless to say, my next video card will not be from ATI.
Ranting aside, it seems to me that Microsoft shot itself in the foot with this one. Yes, it is possible to run LUA on Windows and Microsoft best practices whitepapers do advocate writing for restricted permissions. Then they turn around and give all new users administrative bits*, combine that with all users always having administrative bits in previous versions of Windows (95, 98, ME), and you get developers who have been forced into the mindset of writing applications for Admin only. Don't believe me? Look at Apple. like the one-button mouse forcing good UI design, new users not being root by default and having to sudo every time you need root bits forces application designers to plan for LUA. In turn, the majority of applications for the Mac (including those that play DVDs or are written by Intuit) run with restricted credentials.
So the thirty second summary: Granted, both Windows and OSX allow LUA. The design of Windows, however, has trained designers to ignore security best practices and write for Administrative users only. Because fo this, LUA effectively does not exist for Windows home users. That, and it's not just brain-dead game makers - in order to use useful/worthwhile/important** software on Windows, you often need to be Admin. This, in turn, makes it so that Windows computers effectively are only useful if you're Admin.
Just my two cents.
-eak
* I say Home Uesrs because this really only applies to stand-alone machines. Once you get to SBS domains, your user templates encourage LUA, and if you're setting up an enterprise domain... Well, if you don't understand/implement LUA, you're not qualified to implement said domain. Then again, I would argue that the majority of compromised Windows machines are those of Joe Home User.
** Anyone who thinks games are as useful/worthwhile/important as, say, financial software really needs to get out of Mommy's basement more often.
Despite your very hostile (dare I say troll-ish) attitude to the people who have responded to you, I feel compelled to take your bait and try and explain why I feel that having a browser monopoly (even an open source one) is a problem.
See, you seem to think that if there was one supreme browser that was open sourced, everything would be groovy. I have news for you... there's this little thing called the 90% problem. More specifically, the problem with a lot of open source software is that it gets mostly finished (to the point where it is usable for the average geek - not for 'Joe Sixpack') and then the developers go on to other, more interesting projects. See, they're not being compensated for their time, so they want to work on what is 'fun' or 'exciting' instead of fixing the last couple of problems with a piece of software. Now, a non-open source company, like Opera, has a financial incentive to write that last 10%, however, a group of open source developers, like those working on Firefox, who are not getting paid to write user-friendly code, have virtually no incentive to go the 'last mile'. Plus, paid developers have to listen to their users, or they risk alienating their customers. Open Source developers are free to be horribly rude to their users and can ignore usability problems (becasue they feel that the way *they* use the software is the only correct way*) becuase they have no financial incentive to listen to their users.
Now, you're probably going to post a rude reply about how I must simply be a Microsoft apologist because I don't worship FireFox. To try and prevent that (not that it'll do any good), I would like to state that I believe that having multiple open source and closed source browsers all competing in the marketplace is the best way to spur innovation. Also, all things being equal, I will always pick open source software over *equal* closed source wares.
Finally, as someone who has been doing web development since Mosaic reigned supreme, it is my opinion that the current browser that is the closest to w3c compliance is Opera. Granted, it might not display everything quite the way you expect it to display (or quite the way it displays in FireFox), but before you start pointing and screaming about how Opera sucks, and FireFox is more compliant... go back and re-read the actual standards (you *have* read them thoroughly, haven't you?). Most of the time, I think you will find that Opera is actually conforming to the published standards, and that what you thought it *should* look like is actually due to a mis-reading of the standards (or possibly due to a false expectation, based upon FireFox's mis-rendering).
Bah... I'm really not anti-FireFox, despite the tone fo this post. I just get annoyed when people assume that FireFox (or even open source in general) is always the best. That mentality is almost as bad the people who think IE is the internet!
All of that said, I'm *still* waiting for any browser other than IE5+ or NS4 to support embedded fonts! =)
* I realize the tone of this is a tad bitter - I had a horrible experience when I submitted a FireFox bug a few months ago. Basically, FireFox was not following a w3c xhtml specification and when I submitted the bug, I got rudly told that the developers felt that the w3c's spec was not the right way to implement something, so FireFox would not be following that particular spec... Oh, and by the way: How dare I question the wisdom of the mighty and always-correct FireFox developers. Needless to say, I now consider FireFox my browser of last resort!
FYI: Nokia already offers a one-button cell phone - the Nokia 7280. Actually, it's closer to an iPod's scroll wheel, but still...
I find it weird that the open source community cries 'troll' when they read this comment.
Seriously. I normally don't gripe about moderation, but this particular one just bugs me.
Personally, I agree with the parent. Now I am going to be cynical for a moment: Perhaps the reason this is marked 'troll' is because it is one of the few *rational* posts and a rational post about Microsoft isn't cool enough for the average Slashdot mod. Ok, now that I'm done being sarcastic, I have to add that piss-poor mods like this one are one reason I find myself avoiding Slashdot in favor of less biased news communities.
For the record: I think it'd be great to have a bi-partisan (to use a political term) study comparing the relative merits of Open Source and Microsoft products. Of course, almost everyone here would hate it. The Microsofties would be upset because it would show that OSS is better in some areas. The OSS zealots would be be upset because the would show that OSS is NOT better in some areas. The Apple fanboys would be upset because the study would probably not include OSX. Those few of us who truly believe there are pros and cons to all of the above (and other) offerings and that you should simply choose the best tool for your particular job - well, we will get even more disgusted by Slashdot.
Of course, by saying this... I've just committed Karmic suicide, but dammit! It needed to be said.
Extrapolating what you are saying... It is ok to throw red paint on someone wearing leather shoes because leather is bad and without feeling the pain, that person will not switch to non-leather shoes. (I just got back from the theater and the Animal Rights Activists were out in force!)
What if I am wearing fake leather shoes that look real? Obviously I am only hiding the fact that I am a closet animal-killer, and even if I am not... Well, My shoe manufacturere probably makes some shoes out of leather so I am not really an innocent and should "feel the pain" until I see the error of my ways.
Note: If you are a SysAdmin and actually agree with the above sentince... lets just say it makes me ashamed to be in the same industry as you.
I could have written that post. (Though, if I did, I would have not posted anonymously.)
I hate RBLs with a passion. Let me relate something that happened to me (In small enough words that these *BL loving people might actually understand):
I used to live in a small town. Very small. One ISP total. One. They subscribed to a blacklist. I stopped getting legitimate email. I asked them to whitelist the email addresses. They refused, saying that I would have to speak with the black-listers themselves. I was refered to MAPS and ORBL. I could not even get ahold of anyone at ORBL and they never answered my emails. I was eventually able to get ahold of someone at MAPS who was probably the rudest person I have ever talked to. Even ruder than Verizon's billing department when you find an error in a bill. I got accused of being a spammer who was trying to get my ip off their list. I was told I would just have to wait until the problem was resolved, there was nothing I could do. It took nearly two months before I received email from that particular email address. Every step of the way, the people at MAPS were unhelpful and rude.
Note, my IP address was NOT EVEN IN THE BLOCKED RANGE. Heck, I was not even affiliated with the ISP that had been blocked. Still, I was harmed by the *BLs assinine actions.
Sure, I could have changes ISPs, but wait... There were no others in my area. (Thank God I have since moved to a more metropolitan area.)
Well, the sender of the email could have phoned me, right? The sender was my cousin who was working in an international school ont he other side of the world (Litterally). Do you know how much a phone call from Switzerland to costs? Plus the time difference is a killer. Sure, they could have snail-mailed me, but that takes weeks, and at least one of the messages was pretty darned time-sensative. (He had to have an emergency operation, and wanted me to know that he had survived it.) Sure, I want to wait two weeks to hear if he is alive.
So what should I do? Oh, I know... Call MAPS, let them know what is up, and they will help me (the innocent end user) fix it. Nope, I tried that, got accused of being a spammer and verbally abused.
All I can say is that now that I am in a policy-making position for my company, we will never use a *BL *and* we recommend to our clients to avoid them also. In my professional opinion, these 'services' lack the credibility and accountability to make them usefull to *any* business and it boggles my mind that any PHB let alone any geek worth his or her caffiene would ever consider using them. *BLs are truely worse than the problem they claim to help fix.
So far there have been a lot of analogies about *BLs, here is my contribution. *BLs are a lot like your local phone company not letting your Aunt Mildred in Portland connect to your telephone because her neighbor's kid made one prank phonecall a month ago.
At this point in life I supervise the administration of several hundred mail servers and none of them rely on *BLs. We use a variety of other filtering techniques that end up keeping the spam at virtually zero, with almost no false positives. Furthermore, we offer each and every user the opportunity to review every message sent to their account and to flag false-positives so that those addresses can be whitelisted.
It is not perfect, but there are plenty of ways to virtually eliminate spam without the abusive and myopic tactics of *BLs.
Ok, I'm done ranting now. =)
Dude. AIX.t ml
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/aix/os/index.h
There're some really nice B&B's on teh Cape, too. Lane's End, etc.
Eak
Bull.
There is such a thing as embedded fonts in web-pages. There are two formats the cross-browser (Netscape 4.x and all IEs) TrueDoc format and the Internet Explorer only OpenType (Developed jointly by Microsoft and Adobe). However, Netscape effectively killed the TrueDoc format in Netscape 6 and 7, so...
Speaking as a web developer, I'm a tad pissed at Netscape, because embedded fonts let you have more complete controll over the formatting of the web-page.
FWIW: I think there is a W3C proposal for an embedded font standard, but I'm not recalling what the current status of the proposal is.
And what percent of France's energy mix comes from nuclear power?* I thought so. Not that I'm defending Europe, or France, just pointing out that blanket generalizations suck.
Eak
*About 76%, according to the CEA.
What is this "floppy drive" you speak of? Everyone knows all real coputers (C64) take cartriges!
Eak
No, ResNet was _wired_ by idiots, the people who run it just are trying ot make due with a woefully inadequate infrastructure/budget. Can anyone say 10 Mbit *Shared* between all the dorms? I knew you could. Shared ethernet in one dorm is bad enough, but between the entire on-campus student population? Eak
SO everyone who buys a hamburger at McDonalds should only be able to get a Big Mac, because otherwise the pace of hamburger innovation would be halted? (But what about those of us who can afford a cheesburger a day, but can't afford a big mac a day?) Just some food for thought! I'm off to lunch, Eak
I really don't see why this is a bad thing. My DSL provider (Verizon) has done this type of pricing for some time now. My line will support up to 1.5M/384K or 768K/768K. I have a choice of speeds from 768K/128K (basic - ~$40/month w/out ISP) to 768K/768K (premium = ~$70/month w/out ISP). I'm a poor college student, so I went with the cheepest package, giving me the always-on service that I need (for my mail server) and faster downloads than the dialup I'm coming from. (Oh and due to the massive f*ck-ege that is ResNet, I'll be getting faster connections than my mates in the dorms.)
Now I just wish anything other than Verizon DSL was available in my area, as I'm paying almost $60 a month for the "basic" service ($40 plus ISP charges). I'd go for just about anyone else over Verizon, even if it were more expensive, just because Verizon really screwed me over last year. However, as long as they have a monopoly on broadband services in my area (no cable modems, no wireless, no alternate telecos, only Verizon), I'll continue to pay their over-inflated rates.
But as long as there is at least one competing broadband provider, I fail to see why this type of pricing is A Bad Thing(TM).
Eak
Well, I have a HP laptop, and it did not come with a floppy. The interestig part is when you want to flash your BIOS, the updater requires that it run off a floppy. Which, I may add, is the only time I've used a floppy drive so far. (Lets hear it for mini CD-RWs! Size of a floppy, but with ~200MB storage.)
-eak
Urps... My bad. Make that Office SBE (about 150?)... nad Office XP Pro (for a godawful sum)... etc.
When I purchaced my HP laptop earlier this year it came with a default install of MS Works 6.0, but I was given the option of upgrading to WordPerfect Office 2002 (for somehting like $60), or Ofice XP Standard (about $150?), or Office XP SBE (for a godawful sum of money). As I was going to be installing OpenOffice anyways, I went with the default of Works. However, a quick check of the HPShopping Website doesn't show the option any more. (Looks like you're stuck with just Works for laptops and Works or Office Standard/SBE for desktops. Too bad, really. WordPerfect Office 2002 isn't too shabby. (Now if only they could get CorelCentral to talk to my SSL-enabled IMAP server, I'd be sold. =)