I highly doubt they consider the conflict over and suspect that Isreal will now heavily ramp up its encryption & security to the highest standards since I believe that's one of the few things the United States will not export to them (see Phil Zimmerman's FBI case file on exporting encryption programs to foreign soil).
This must be written by an american. Everybody else knows that the US Govt gives billions of dollars worth of military kit to Israel free of charge every year (source:http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Is rael/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html). The US supplied Israel with Apache gunships free of charge years before they would sell them to the British (Where I live).
Without American support there never would have been a war. In fact the only reason Israel still exists is because the entire country is bankrolled by the US. That is why the US is so hated in the Arab world. And the main people who foot the bill are the US taxpayers.
It was also the main reason the lunatics who flew planes into the WTC picked American targets.
If you disagree, check out the source above and find something that proves it inaccurate please. Otherwise do not just mod this a troll because you dont like it.
Bullshit. They just want to be able to sell a product, and they are mighty pissed off that MS are now bundling software that makes the products unnecesary.
I still remember that their virus scanner used to catch back orifice as a trojan but completely ignore PC anywhere. Both products did pretty much the same thing except one was more extensible than the other. And one was written by the same people as the Virus scanner.
These companies are just whining because Microsoft is now doing to them what it has to Netscape and loads of others since.
Only if they are maladjusted emotional cripples with anger management issues. People make me angry all the time, I just learn to deal with that anger and try and channel it into something constructive. Why do so many people think violence is ever a solution to anything?
Violence is always unacceptable unless you are truly threatened with death or injury.
Just thought I might as well contibute my ten cents worth, but from the opposite perspective.
I recently tried a number of distributions for my new laptop (Redhat, Suse, gentoo).
Now everybody else has carped on about gentoo and yes getting gentoo working required time, perseverence and one question regarding wifi posted to the forums.
Redhat (Fedora) installed fine then just didnt work - kernel panic straight after grub.
Suse just worked. And I mean just worked, it recognised every bit of hardware first time with no user input from me. But this makes me think there must be people out there who think they are some sort of uber hacker just for running linux on their home PC. Some of the distributions now are so easy to install they rival windows. Hell, being that my last windows install required installing some sata drivers from the non-existant floppy drive in my machine you could even say some linux distributions are easier.
Now when I started using Linux some 8 or 9 years ago, all linux distributions required the user to have an awful lot more knowledge of how a PC worked than windows. Nowadays there are some distributions which suit people who dont want the hassle of windows (spyware, virii) but still dont want to know what their PC does under the hood.
I am very glad though that there are still some distributions suited to the likes of me, people who dont want to be molly coddled. Instead I want to know that the only software installed on my machine was stuff I directly told it to install, not a huge amount of junk that some package might thinks it needs in the remote chance I want to use every last bell and whistle it could provide. In all probablity I don't, and if I do I will install all the stuff it could make use of and tell it to USE it.
In short, you dont like gentoo, fine. But dont blame it on gentoo when in fact you are not willing to learn how to use a very complicated tool to the best of its ability. Just carry on reinstalling the entire OS everytime some minor little glitch that you cant fix comes along.
Not sure which of the above groups of people comes off better by this AC's estimation, but I like it.
I reckon I almost fall in category 5, but I don't not understand the building codes and laws, I just want them all rewritten to say what I think they should.:)
Maybe a better solutions would be to look at the political system that allows bribary of senators and give it good overhaul to make it immune to big business throwing money at your elected politicians to make them their elected politicians.
Maybe you should also look at the entire political system and realise that democracy in the form so espoused by the US that they will invade other countries and force it on the resident population (Iraq) is not the best political system in existance. The biggest problem with democracy is that it relies on all the public having a clear understanding the issues.
Since in the modern highly complicated world where in many cases there are no clear right and wrong answers most people need to study long and hard to even understand how a particular issue effects them.
Why do we allow people with no education to speak of and no interest in politics the right to vote? Surely they are just guessing rather than making an informed choice?
We might just as well throw a dice to decide who rules us for the next 5 years.
I remember my old voodoo2 card with some fondness, it worked fine for every 3d game I used it for at 800*600 which was the only resolution my monitor would do non-interlaced. I had no intention of replacing my monitor as I was a poor student at the time with no dosh.
Then along comes that glorious peice of crap that was windows XP. Now all of a sudden my voodoo2 is unsupported. Not by my games mind you, I want to carry on playing the same games i have been without putting up with having to reinstall the OS periodically because windows used to require this every once in while (Windows ME and Windows 95SE were both awful in this regard). But althought windows XP improved on the stability front and no longer required reinstalling once a month it did stop supporting (IE - no drivers available for) the Voodoo2.
So I have to go out and spend a fortune on new hardware which ended up giving me very little in thw wae of a performance boost. Now being that this happened what morons moderated the above article as interesting? It seems the author is unaware that you may wish to upgrade your operating system but then run exactly the same software you were beforehand, possibly because no new software is available that has been written for that OS until a few months after the main OS release.
You still want the new OS however because the old OS was a buggy, unreliable piece of crap that should never have been given away let alone sold. I am convinced the only reason we have a decent version of Windows at present (XP) is because of Linux. You only need to go back and look at past Microsoft performance when they had a complete monopoly, they stopped not only innovating, but also paying any attention to quality control either. If anyone else doesnt remember how bad windows ME was then lucky you, as I was misfortunate enough to pay for a legal, off the shelf copy. It was the main thing that convinced me to switch to Linux I felt wholeheartedly ripped off for paying for something that did not work.
Basically, the parent posted might be right if not for that fact that 8 years ago, the underlying windows OS was totally useless and did not even run well on hardware from the same period. That same hardware could be much better utilised by windows XP as this was specifically written for alot of this same hardware, except voodoo2 graphics cards if u were unfortunate enough to own one as 3DFX has by then been bought by nvidia (or ati maybe, i forget) and the new owners wanted to bankrupt the company.
The first thing to take into account is that this article seemed to be written by a "security expert" who skimped on a few key details.
The first is that no web site should ever be able to execute code on your PC without your express permission. If it can then the browser being used to access that site needs fixing.
Now there will still be cases where the user has to give permission to execute code locally in order for the site to work properly but these should be very very rare. Most code that is executed such as ActiveX or Javascript should be excuted in a sandbox environment where no access is given to local PC resources. If a local resource is needed it should be asked for specifically and the accepted or denied permission by the user.
What does need to happen is that users need to be educated into a state of mind where they deny everything and then only go back the accept permission to access a local resource if something doesnt work properly and it make sense for the web site to be accessing the resource in question. For instance, if a web site wants access to my/etc/passwd or/etc/shadow file under linux (poor examples as they are locked while linux is running) I would deny it.
These problems all seem to stem from most PC users being lazy and not wanting to know these things. What they want is to have everything complicated hidden from them and everything to "just work". This might be possible with a pencil or other simple device but with things as complicated as PC's or Motor Vehicles it will not. Ever.
I really think that for people to expect to use a machine as complicated as a PC, they must understand the basics of how to operate it safely. This is no different to expecting drivers to undertake a test of competance. Without a driving licence I am not able to drive on the road although I can drive round my own back yard to my hearts content. Using a computer should ideally be the same where users are forced to undertake a basic competancy exam before they can allow their computer to interact with the web.
Until this happens you will always have users who allow their PC to be hijacked by malicious software and then carry on using it without calling for help. This is no different to forcing drivers not to drive with faulty breaks or severely worn tires.
Now how you would enforce this is a little complicated but it must still be possible with legislation. This is no different to a car salesman wanting to see a driving licence and proof of insurance before I buy a car. He wouldn't do that by choice (He would probably much rather make a sale regardless) but can be forced to by law.
As a Brit I probably know more about American culture than anywhere else in Europe, not because I need to or any crap like that, but because I read and watch BBC News 24 alot.
The fact is that American culture is very inward facing. Take the World Series for example, its not the world who take part in it, it is only North America. There are many more examples of this where the US media equate World to mean US.
Now your argument that we need to know more about the rest of Europe is bullshit too, I have no need (or care really) to know anything about most of the rest of Europe as it doesnt (yet - when Europe merges more it might.) affect my life. Fiscal Policy is set from the London where I live, we are not part of the Euro. The ruler of my country (Blair) is only elected by British people. Tax level are for the most part set by UK Govt. So why would I give a shit about the rest of Europe. But I can still name a few other European leaders (Chirac (Leftish) and the German Conservative Bint).
The fact is that one of the reasons we come across as more worldly is that we have a much better education system and much better press (State sponsered BBC). And with the way the American education system is going at the moment (teaching all that creationism bollocks instead of real science) in a few years you lot wont even know that there are countries in the world that don't have christianity as a major religion.
There is another reason why OSS can come up with better solutions, the projects are usually managed by experienced developers who understand what makes good code.
Most companies are stuck with management who cant code and hence dont understand what makes good code. These people then usually hire which ever dev kisses their arses the most in the interview.
Usually you have a backup log which can be referrenced to show what was backed up when.
(This is most unfortunate because I forgot to run a backup on friday when I left the office and my boss will have noticed that I forgot when he checks the logs)
Yup, KDE has loads more features the Gnome. But then again it has been developed for longer so you would expect this.
The problem for me though with KDE is that the initial start point seemed to be making it as different from Windows as possible. Unfortunately though Windows is one of the easiest to use desktops around with an awful lot of useability testing behind it (some of it by Apple lets not forget) and most of its features are there for a reason.
Ok - we all hate the fact that it can be unreliable, but then I dont particularly like the various bugs in Gnome either (gnome startup bug for instance).
The other thing that I really like about windows is the shortcut keystrokes. It is actually possible to use windows without having to take your hands away from the keyboard. These are the sort of things that make it a far more polished OS than either KDE or Gnome.
(I am actually a bit of a Linux zealot so the fact that I am posting a message detailing its few good points surprises me more than anybody.)
If not I'll remind you. One of the main reasons the revolution was successful was because the previous government cared more about pleasing the mafia and the CIA than pleasing its own citizens. Revolutions are generally only successful when the majority of the population are grossly dissatisfied with the current government and feel the armed struggle is the only option left open to them.
For years Havana was simply a playground for the very rich from the US. In those days, most of the population was still poor, it was just that they had to see foriegn tourists and businesses reaping all the benefits of their labour. Nowadays, everyone is poor (A gross generalisation I know but hopefully you get my point).
This means that although you might have to go without the occasional little luxury, you dont have to see someone else who has more money than they know what to do with living it up.
And if anyone really wants to make an argument that the average cubans lot was better before the revolution I would love to hear it, I need a good laugh.
Well, I guess we have nothing better to do but watch the flame war begin.
It is a friday after all. Who wants to do any work when the weekend is so close.
I bet 90% of working slashdotters are just twiddling with shit trying not to start anything that might make them leave the office 5 minutes late (I know I am).
And for those of you out there who are still working hard - Your lieing to yourself, reading this is not work.
Just a thought, but maybe the US election contains so many different selections to put people off voting.
After all you cant actually tell me that Joe Public is the best person to decide on who the various officials should be. Since I most of the public dont have time to investigate each candidate for each post for the most part they will just be guessing or voting along party lines. Or worse still they will be voting according to what the media has said about a particular candidate.
Being that most american media is owned (and hence controlled) by very rich capitalists this will always bias any election in favour of whoever the extremely rich would prefer. And most of us should know that they prefer whoever is kindest to their bank balance.
I can understand voting for senators as they balance the power of the president (who also should be elected). But who actually knows enough about their district attourney and their knowledge of the law? Come to think of it very few people would have enough knowledge of the laws of the land themselves to even make such a judgement. And this is just one example (from a brit who know very little about the US voting system).
Another example would be judges who you also elect I believe, this would also require a high level of knowledge regarding the Law of the local state, the consitution (How many Americans here can state every article and amendment?) and also to read every decision that judge had passed down in his previous term.
Now I personally work at least 39 hours a week and so there is no way I could (or would want to) devote enough time to come to an educated decision regarding who would make the best judge. I use this example as I know there is a great deal of similarity between our judicial systems from my cursory studies (Law at A-Level) of the English Legal System (1189AD to present day).
Now if someone from the US can honestly tell me that they came to an educated decision about every one of those 50 selections they were supposed to have made and also explain each one and why then I will be very surprised. I have trouble deciding on just the economic factors which govern who I vote for in the next election over here, and I only have to choose one post (The next election in the UK will be to select our prime minister, currently Blair but he wont stand again). And that is just one facet of the myriad of factors which he will have control over so will thus affect my life over the four years he is in power for.
I installed IE7 beta 2 on my work development PC. Then it caused problems with the (very complicated) website I work on. So I tried to uninstall it and all I did was make it look like my old IE6. The problems still remained until I installed beta3.
This indicates to me that the "uninstall" routine only changes the interface, not the upgrades it did to your OS in the background.
The moral of this story: All software has beta (or alpha) in the title for a reason and should only be installed on machines that do not actually need to work on a 24*7 basis.
(oh - and IE7 also fails the acid test and does not generate a neat smiley face)
I have heard this argument before when I was a kid. A friend of my mothers said the same thing about me going paintballing and playing laser tag games every weekend.
I might be inclined to believe there is some truth to it if I had grown up into a gun toting psychopath but as it is am a boring pacifist who finds all violence abhorent and campaigns against a war in any forum they possibly can (see previous slashdot rants)
With hindsight I think that by the time I reached me early teens I had learned to differentiate between fantasy and reality and so I knew that the repurcussions of me shooting my friends with a laser tag pistol or paintball gun were very different from any repurcussions I might have faced if I had shot them with a loaded firearm.
Interestingly though the American military obviously agrees with some of the points made in the parent post as they currently publish my favourite video game (Americas Army) for training purposes. I like it for its realism but I think that eventually the US army will realise it is not actually helping recruitment as most of the people who play are neither US citizens, nor are they prime candidates for military service.
PS - Anyone who likes first person shooters and hasnt played it can find a link to the AA site below. Check it out. http://www.americasarmy.com/
Whats normal? American soldiers raping indiginous folk in whatever part of the world they are fucking up (Iraq)?
Stop being such an ignorant twat. The US also turns a blind eye to crimes far worse if they a bit of an embarrasment overseas.
The US also point blank refuses to allow their soldiers to be subject to any laws except thier own when they are serving overseas. So why should any other nations hand criminals over to the US if they wont do the same in return.
Does anyone know why these Muslim nutcases hate the US so much. (Apart from the Iraq + Afgan invasions, but they are post 9/11)
One of the main reasons for the September 11th attacks was the huge amount of aid given to Israel to enable them to wage war against the Arab world.
The current attacks on Lebannon are paid for by US taxpayers.
In 2006 the US is giving Israel 2.2 Billion dollars in military aid. This is not a loan, it is a gift. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Is rael/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html)
Knowing most american mods this post will be modded down as offtopic, but this is one of reasons for terrorist attacks on planes going to the US (These attacks foiled today were only on planes leaving the UK for the US, not planes going anywhere else according to what little info has been released here in the UK.)
I can see why some one like yourself who has problems with english would not like config-in-text-files.
(the correct wording would be "All config-in-text-files are the biggest peices of junk")
The nice thing about storing config info in a text file is that if it becomes corrupt a smart human (something you are definately not) can go through the text file and see where it is corrupt and fix it without needing any extra software. If it is stored in some sort of binary file you need some thing like regedit.
I dont know how much a netflix account is, but my usenet provider (claranet) have almost every group medium retention and offer a number of different price packages. The one I subscribe to is 10Gb per month for £20 per year.
They offer an unlimited account for £30 per month which I have used in the past when I downloaded more.
Lets just be honest for a moment, IE is the dominant web browser as it is preloaded on 90% of the worlds PC's before they are sold.
As a web developer, clients are generally only interested in what their site will look like under IE. Even graphic designers who use Macs only ever check what the site will look like under IE for the Mac. (Or maybe IE for the PC when it looks shit on IE for the Mac and we explain why).
Mozilla is working long and hard to try and make some inroads into this. And the best thing they can do is make their browser replicate the way IE renders pages. (Piss poor rendering quirks and all).
I have had 2 or 3 clients over 3 years who have actually cared what their site looked like under mozilla / firefox. And this is out of hundreds of different sites I have built in that time. I have never had one client even care about Opera. So if it passes the acid test or whatever, who cares? Certainly not anyone who wants to make any money out of the web. Just a few geeks who still behave like kids and scream to be in some elite minority.
Now I do not like this state of affairs, but I am also a pragmatist who realises that the only thing that stands a chance of making any inroads into the browser market is firefox. So I honestly think that regardless of which is the better browser the best thing to encourage a more diverse web, with more sites optimised for a more general platform rather than just IE would be if the Opera devs just packed it in and started contributing to mozilla / firefox. Maybe when we have two browsers with 50%/50% market share things would change but not now.
Have any web developers out there ever been asked to produce a commercial site with Opoera in mind? I would love to hear some real positive responses but I fear I will be disapointed.
A couple of my work colleagues are plusnet customers and I actually remember them talking about this when it first happened. Apparently Plusnet conducted some sort of upgrade allowing their techies to log in to two different sessions at the same time which before they never allowed. Anyway, one techie got confused, thought he closed the session to the live server. Then clicked to log into the backup.
Then went and browsed the web or somthing, then came back and clicked on what he thought was the backup and deleted everything. The announcement said he realised his mistake almost immediately but by then their raid array was bussily emptying itself and this fuckup was instantly being duped across all disks.
I have made similar mistakes and the moral seems to be:
Only use a root account when you absolutely NEED it and nothing else will do, the rest of the time just have a few different accounts with different priviledge levels.
Slashdot Mirror
I highly doubt they consider the conflict over and suspect that Isreal will now heavily ramp up its encryption & security to the highest standards since I believe that's one of the few things the United States will not export to them (see Phil Zimmerman's FBI case file on exporting encryption programs to foreign soil).
:http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Is rael/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html).
This must be written by an american. Everybody else knows that the US Govt gives billions of dollars worth of military kit to Israel free of charge every year (source
The US supplied Israel with Apache gunships free of charge years before they would sell them to the British (Where I live).
Without American support there never would have been a war. In fact the only reason Israel still exists is because the entire country is bankrolled by the US. That is why the US is so hated in the Arab world. And the main people who foot the bill are the US taxpayers.
It was also the main reason the lunatics who flew planes into the WTC picked American targets.
If you disagree, check out the source above and find something that proves it inaccurate please. Otherwise do not just mod this a troll because you dont like it.
We are not talking about geopolitics here, we are talking about people who should behave differently in a civilised society.
:)
Now shut the fuck up before I come round there and kick your head in.
Bullshit. They just want to be able to sell a product, and they are mighty pissed off that MS are now bundling software that makes the products unnecesary.
I still remember that their virus scanner used to catch back orifice as a trojan but completely ignore PC anywhere. Both products did pretty much the same thing except one was more extensible than the other. And one was written by the same people as the Virus scanner.
These companies are just whining because Microsoft is now doing to them what it has to Netscape and loads of others since.
People get angry, so they start a fight.
Only if they are maladjusted emotional cripples with anger management issues. People make me angry all the time, I just learn to deal with that anger and try and channel it into something constructive. Why do so many people think violence is ever a solution to anything?
Violence is always unacceptable unless you are truly threatened with death or injury.
Just thought I might as well contibute my ten cents worth, but from the opposite perspective.
I recently tried a number of distributions for my new laptop (Redhat, Suse, gentoo).
Now everybody else has carped on about gentoo and yes getting gentoo working required time, perseverence and one question regarding wifi posted to the forums.
Redhat (Fedora) installed fine then just didnt work - kernel panic straight after grub.
Suse just worked. And I mean just worked, it recognised every bit of hardware first time with no user input from me. But this makes me think there must be people out there who think they are some sort of uber hacker just for running linux on their home PC. Some of the distributions now are so easy to install they rival windows. Hell, being that my last windows install required installing some sata drivers from the non-existant floppy drive in my machine you could even say some linux distributions are easier.
Now when I started using Linux some 8 or 9 years ago, all linux distributions required the user to have an awful lot more knowledge of how a PC worked than windows. Nowadays there are some distributions which suit people who dont want the hassle of windows (spyware, virii) but still dont want to know what their PC does under the hood.
I am very glad though that there are still some distributions suited to the likes of me, people who dont want to be molly coddled. Instead I want to know that the only software installed on my machine was stuff I directly told it to install, not a huge amount of junk that some package might thinks it needs in the remote chance I want to use every last bell and whistle it could provide. In all probablity I don't, and if I do I will install all the stuff it could make use of and tell it to USE it.
In short, you dont like gentoo, fine. But dont blame it on gentoo when in fact you are not willing to learn how to use a very complicated tool to the best of its ability. Just carry on reinstalling the entire OS everytime some minor little glitch that you cant fix comes along.
Not sure which of the above groups of people comes off better by this AC's estimation, but I like it.
:)
I reckon I almost fall in category 5, but I don't not understand the building codes and laws, I just want them all rewritten to say what I think they should.
Maybe a better solutions would be to look at the political system that allows bribary of senators and give it good overhaul to make it immune to big business throwing money at your elected politicians to make them their elected politicians.
Maybe you should also look at the entire political system and realise that democracy in the form so espoused by the US that they will invade other countries and force it on the resident population (Iraq) is not the best political system in existance. The biggest problem with democracy is that it relies on all the public having a clear understanding the issues.
Since in the modern highly complicated world where in many cases there are no clear right and wrong answers most people need to study long and hard to even understand how a particular issue effects them.
Why do we allow people with no education to speak of and no interest in politics the right to vote? Surely they are just guessing rather than making an informed choice?
We might just as well throw a dice to decide who rules us for the next 5 years.
Que?
Knock Knock Knock, anybody home?
I remember my old voodoo2 card with some fondness, it worked fine for every 3d game I used it for at 800*600 which was the only resolution my monitor would do non-interlaced. I had no intention of replacing my monitor as I was a poor student at the time with no dosh.
Then along comes that glorious peice of crap that was windows XP. Now all of a sudden my voodoo2 is unsupported. Not by my games mind you, I want to carry on playing the same games i have been without putting up with having to reinstall the OS periodically because windows used to require this every once in while (Windows ME and Windows 95SE were both awful in this regard). But althought windows XP improved on the stability front and no longer required reinstalling once a month it did stop supporting (IE - no drivers available for) the Voodoo2.
So I have to go out and spend a fortune on new hardware which ended up giving me very little in thw wae of a performance boost. Now being that this happened what morons moderated the above article as interesting? It seems the author is unaware that you may wish to upgrade your operating system but then run exactly the same software you were beforehand, possibly because no new software is available that has been written for that OS until a few months after the main OS release.
You still want the new OS however because the old OS was a buggy, unreliable piece of crap that should never have been given away let alone sold. I am convinced the only reason we have a decent version of Windows at present (XP) is because of Linux. You only need to go back and look at past Microsoft performance when they had a complete monopoly, they stopped not only innovating, but also paying any attention to quality control either. If anyone else doesnt remember how bad windows ME was then lucky you, as I was misfortunate enough to pay for a legal, off the shelf copy. It was the main thing that convinced me to switch to Linux I felt wholeheartedly ripped off for paying for something that did not work.
Basically, the parent posted might be right if not for that fact that 8 years ago, the underlying windows OS was totally useless and did not even run well on hardware from the same period. That same hardware could be much better utilised by windows XP as this was specifically written for alot of this same hardware, except voodoo2 graphics cards if u were unfortunate enough to own one as 3DFX has by then been bought by nvidia (or ati maybe, i forget) and the new owners wanted to bankrupt the company.
The first thing to take into account is that this article seemed to be written by a "security expert" who skimped on a few key details.
/etc/passwd or /etc/shadow file under linux (poor examples as they are locked while linux is running) I would deny it.
The first is that no web site should ever be able to execute code on your PC without your express permission. If it can then the browser being used to access that site needs fixing.
Now there will still be cases where the user has to give permission to execute code locally in order for the site to work properly but these should be very very rare. Most code that is executed such as ActiveX or Javascript should be excuted in a sandbox environment where no access is given to local PC resources. If a local resource is needed it should be asked for specifically and the accepted or denied permission by the user.
What does need to happen is that users need to be educated into a state of mind where they deny everything and then only go back the accept permission to access a local resource if something doesnt work properly and it make sense for the web site to be accessing the resource in question. For instance, if a web site wants access to my
These problems all seem to stem from most PC users being lazy and not wanting to know these things. What they want is to have everything complicated hidden from them and everything to "just work". This might be possible with a pencil or other simple device but with things as complicated as PC's or Motor Vehicles it will not. Ever.
I really think that for people to expect to use a machine as complicated as a PC, they must understand the basics of how to operate it safely. This is no different to expecting drivers to undertake a test of competance. Without a driving licence I am not able to drive on the road although I can drive round my own back yard to my hearts content. Using a computer should ideally be the same where users are forced to undertake a basic competancy exam before they can allow their computer to interact with the web.
Until this happens you will always have users who allow their PC to be hijacked by malicious software and then carry on using it without calling for help. This is no different to forcing drivers not to drive with faulty breaks or severely worn tires.
Now how you would enforce this is a little complicated but it must still be possible with legislation. This is no different to a car salesman wanting to see a driving licence and proof of insurance before I buy a car. He wouldn't do that by choice (He would probably much rather make a sale regardless) but can be forced to by law.
As a Brit I probably know more about American culture than anywhere else in Europe, not because I need to or any crap like that, but because I read and watch BBC News 24 alot.
The fact is that American culture is very inward facing. Take the World Series for example, its not the world who take part in it, it is only North America. There are many more examples of this where the US media equate World to mean US.
Now your argument that we need to know more about the rest of Europe is bullshit too, I have no need (or care really) to know anything about most of the rest of Europe as it doesnt (yet - when Europe merges more it might.) affect my life. Fiscal Policy is set from the London where I live, we are not part of the Euro. The ruler of my country (Blair) is only elected by British people. Tax level are for the most part set by UK Govt. So why would I give a shit about the rest of Europe. But I can still name a few other European leaders (Chirac (Leftish) and the German Conservative Bint).
The fact is that one of the reasons we come across as more worldly is that we have a much better education system and much better press (State sponsered BBC). And with the way the American education system is going at the moment (teaching all that creationism bollocks instead of real science) in a few years you lot wont even know that there are countries in the world that don't have christianity as a major religion.
Who? Judges?
Dunno, get rid of the lot I say.
There is another reason why OSS can come up with better solutions, the projects are usually managed by experienced developers who understand what makes good code.
Most companies are stuck with management who cant code and hence dont understand what makes good code. These people then usually hire which ever dev kisses their arses the most in the interview.
Usually you have a backup log which can be referrenced to show what was backed up when.
(This is most unfortunate because I forgot to run a backup on friday when I left the office and my boss will have noticed that I forgot when he checks the logs)
Yup, KDE has loads more features the Gnome. But then again it has been developed for longer so you would expect this.
The problem for me though with KDE is that the initial start point seemed to be making it as different from Windows as possible. Unfortunately though Windows is one of the easiest to use desktops around with an awful lot of useability testing behind it (some of it by Apple lets not forget) and most of its features are there for a reason.
Ok - we all hate the fact that it can be unreliable, but then I dont particularly like the various bugs in Gnome either (gnome startup bug for instance).
The other thing that I really like about windows is the shortcut keystrokes. It is actually possible to use windows without having to take your hands away from the keyboard. These are the sort of things that make it a far more polished OS than either KDE or Gnome.
(I am actually a bit of a Linux zealot so the fact that I am posting a message detailing its few good points surprises me more than anybody.)
Anybody in the US know why Castro came to power?
If not I'll remind you. One of the main reasons the revolution was successful was because the previous government cared more about pleasing the mafia and the CIA than pleasing its own citizens. Revolutions are generally only successful when the majority of the population are grossly dissatisfied with the current government and feel the armed struggle is the only option left open to them.
For years Havana was simply a playground for the very rich from the US. In those days, most of the population was still poor, it was just that they had to see foriegn tourists and businesses reaping all the benefits of their labour. Nowadays, everyone is poor (A gross generalisation I know but hopefully you get my point).
This means that although you might have to go without the occasional little luxury, you dont have to see someone else who has more money than they know what to do with living it up.
And if anyone really wants to make an argument that the average cubans lot was better before the revolution I would love to hear it, I need a good laugh.
Well, I guess we have nothing better to do but watch the flame war begin.
It is a friday after all. Who wants to do any work when the weekend is so close.
I bet 90% of working slashdotters are just twiddling with shit trying not to start anything that might make them leave the office 5 minutes late (I know I am).
And for those of you out there who are still working hard - Your lieing to yourself, reading this is not work.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Just a thought, but maybe the US election contains so many different selections to put people off voting.
After all you cant actually tell me that Joe Public is the best person to decide on who the various officials should be.
Since I most of the public dont have time to investigate each candidate for each post for the most part they will just be guessing or voting along party lines. Or worse still they will be voting according to what the media has said about a particular candidate.
Being that most american media is owned (and hence controlled) by very rich capitalists this will always bias any election in favour of whoever the extremely rich would prefer. And most of us should know that they prefer whoever is kindest to their bank balance.
I can understand voting for senators as they balance the power of the president (who also should be elected). But who actually knows enough about their district attourney and their knowledge of the law? Come to think of it very few people would have enough knowledge of the laws of the land themselves to even make such a judgement. And this is just one example (from a brit who know very little about the US voting system).
Another example would be judges who you also elect I believe, this would also require a high level of knowledge regarding the Law of the local state, the consitution (How many Americans here can state every article and amendment?) and also to read every decision that judge had passed down in his previous term.
Now I personally work at least 39 hours a week and so there is no way I could (or would want to) devote enough time to come to an educated decision regarding who would make the best judge. I use this example as I know there is a great deal of similarity between our judicial systems from my cursory studies (Law at A-Level) of the English Legal System (1189AD to present day).
Now if someone from the US can honestly tell me that they came to an educated decision about every one of those 50 selections they were supposed to have made and also explain each one and why then I will be very surprised. I have trouble deciding on just the economic factors which govern who I vote for in the next election over here, and I only have to choose one post (The next election in the UK will be to select our prime minister, currently Blair but he wont stand again). And that is just one facet of the myriad of factors which he will have control over so will thus affect my life over the four years he is in power for.
I installed IE7 beta 2 on my work development PC. Then it caused problems with the (very complicated) website I work on. So I tried to uninstall it and all I did was make it look like my old IE6. The problems still remained until I installed beta3.
This indicates to me that the "uninstall" routine only changes the interface, not the upgrades it did to your OS in the background.
The moral of this story: All software has beta (or alpha) in the title for a reason and should only be installed on machines that do not actually need to work on a 24*7 basis.
(oh - and IE7 also fails the acid test and does not generate a neat smiley face)
I have heard this argument before when I was a kid. A friend of my mothers said the same thing about me going paintballing and playing laser tag games every weekend.
I might be inclined to believe there is some truth to it if I had grown up into a gun toting psychopath but as it is am a boring pacifist who finds all violence abhorent and campaigns against a war in any forum they possibly can (see previous slashdot rants)
With hindsight I think that by the time I reached me early teens I had learned to differentiate between fantasy and reality and so I knew that the repurcussions of me shooting my friends with a laser tag pistol or paintball gun were very different from any repurcussions I might have faced if I had shot them with a loaded firearm.
Interestingly though the American military obviously agrees with some of the points made in the parent post as they currently publish my favourite video game (Americas Army) for training purposes. I like it for its realism but I think that eventually the US army will realise it is not actually helping recruitment as most of the people who play are neither US citizens, nor are they prime candidates for military service.
PS - Anyone who likes first person shooters and hasnt played it can find a link to the AA site below. Check it out.
http://www.americasarmy.com/
Whats normal? American soldiers raping indiginous folk in whatever part of the world they are fucking up (Iraq)?
Stop being such an ignorant twat. The US also turns a blind eye to crimes far worse if they a bit of an embarrasment overseas.
The US also point blank refuses to allow their soldiers to be subject to any laws except thier own when they are serving overseas. So why should any other nations hand criminals over to the US if they wont do the same in return.
Does anyone know why these Muslim nutcases hate the US so much. (Apart from the Iraq + Afgan invasions, but they are post 9/11)
s rael/U.S._Assistance_to_Israel1.html)
One of the main reasons for the September 11th attacks was the huge amount of aid given to Israel to enable them to wage war against the Arab world.
The current attacks on Lebannon are paid for by US taxpayers.
In 2006 the US is giving Israel 2.2 Billion dollars in military aid. This is not a loan, it is a gift.
(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-I
Knowing most american mods this post will be modded down as offtopic, but this is one of reasons for terrorist attacks on planes going to the US (These attacks foiled today were only on planes leaving the UK for the US, not planes going anywhere else according to what little info has been released here in the UK.)
I can see why some one like yourself who has problems with english would not like config-in-text-files.
(the correct wording would be "All config-in-text-files are the biggest peices of junk")
The nice thing about storing config info in a text file is that if it becomes corrupt a smart human (something you are definately not) can go through the text file and see where it is corrupt and fix it without needing any extra software. If it is stored in some sort of binary file you need some thing like regedit.
I dont know how much a netflix account is, but my usenet provider (claranet) have almost every group medium retention and offer a number of different price packages. The one I subscribe to is 10Gb per month for £20 per year.
They offer an unlimited account for £30 per month which I have used in the past when I downloaded more.
Lets just be honest for a moment, IE is the dominant web browser as it is preloaded on 90% of the worlds PC's before they are sold.
As a web developer, clients are generally only interested in what their site will look like under IE. Even graphic designers who use Macs only ever check what the site will look like under IE for the Mac. (Or maybe IE for the PC when it looks shit on IE for the Mac and we explain why).
Mozilla is working long and hard to try and make some inroads into this. And the best thing they can do is make their browser replicate the way IE renders pages. (Piss poor rendering quirks and all).
I have had 2 or 3 clients over 3 years who have actually cared what their site looked like under mozilla / firefox. And this is out of hundreds of different sites I have built in that time. I have never had one client even care about Opera. So if it passes the acid test or whatever, who cares? Certainly not anyone who wants to make any money out of the web. Just a few geeks who still behave like kids and scream to be in some elite minority.
Now I do not like this state of affairs, but I am also a pragmatist who realises that the only thing that stands a chance of making any inroads into the browser market is firefox. So I honestly think that regardless of which is the better browser the best thing to encourage a more diverse web, with more sites optimised for a more general platform rather than just IE would be if the Opera devs just packed it in and started contributing to mozilla / firefox. Maybe when we have two browsers with 50%/50% market share things would change but not now.
Have any web developers out there ever been asked to produce a commercial site with Opoera in mind? I would love to hear some real positive responses but I fear I will be disapointed.
A couple of my work colleagues are plusnet customers and I actually remember them talking about this when it first happened. Apparently Plusnet conducted some sort of upgrade allowing their techies to log in to two different sessions at the same time which before they never allowed. Anyway, one techie got confused, thought he closed the session to the live server. Then clicked to log into the backup.
Then went and browsed the web or somthing, then came back and clicked on what he thought was the backup and deleted everything. The announcement said he realised his mistake almost immediately but by then their raid array was bussily emptying itself and this fuckup was instantly being duped across all disks.
I have made similar mistakes and the moral seems to be:
Only use a root account when you absolutely NEED it and nothing else will do, the rest of the time just have a few different accounts with different priviledge levels.