If this happened on a Un*x machine (Sun, HP, Linux, BSD), the damage would be confined and limited to what the user had unprotected. It would be highly unusual for a Un*x user hit with a StarOffice macro exploit to have enough exposure to compromise the system.
For me, the system is the least valuable area. I have system cds and if it gets borked, I can reinstall and reconfigure. A hassle "yes", end of the world "no". What concerns me is all the irreplaceable content in my home directory. In my home dir, I have all the privileges I need to ruin it all. Now, I keep backups because I know that all computers always fail (at some point in time), but most people are pretty cavalier about backing up stuff. Of course, when I backup, I only backup my data because really, the system is stupidly easy to replace. A person who loses all their baby pics due to a malicious macro isn't really going to care that their printer config is still good.
Same here. I almost agreed to buy shares but in the end, chickened out. When I first heard about the chance to get in on the IPO, I was excited and decided I wanted X shares. Then I read all the warnings and skimmed the prospectus and decided that X/2 shares might be a better idea. Then I looked at the news and back at the prospectus again and decided I should get even fewer shares. Then I fell victim to the problem Vonage had where people calling in would get a message that your phone was out of service --- I decided to bag it at that point.
Good luck enforcing your judgment in Dubai. If the buyer is to be believed, it took two months for Amir to mail the laptop after he was paid, it wasn't as described... besides not working, e.g., 1/4 the advertised memory, and Amir had left the country.
Secondly, let's say you do get a judgment against someone -- you are out your filing fee, the costs of getting the judgment recognized by a foreign court (and in the States, this means in another state even), and the costs associated with collections. And good luck collecting anyway. Fact is, the perfect fraud is to sell a laptop on ebay to an out of state buyer for $300. Oh, and more good luck proving the laptop wasn't damaged in the mail -- in other words, to prove fraud you'll have to prove the seller lied about it's functionality. Care to bet he says it worked fine before mailing and "oh look, I clearly stated I'm not responsible for shipping damage".
I once bought a laptop on ebay. Completely not as described in a bad way (slower processor). I'm bitter.
You're absolutely right about the "navigate" term -- I meant "skip" but as I already used that word, "navigate" would naturally take a different meaning. To be clear, changing playlists on the ipod is hopelessly dangerous while driving -- skipping songs is really easy. After I wrote the post I was a bit embarrassed because it sounds so "fanboy". Any device with relatively large skip forward/back buttons will be easy to use in the car. I just happened across an ipod at a good price so I got it. All that said, I can't say often enough how awful the Creative Nomad MG II's interface was. It was practically unusable and forever soured me on Creative Crap (tm). Did I mention it was the worst UI I've ever experienced? I have $350 worth of bitterness to get out over that magnesium turd.
There are two Washingtons. To the west of the Cascades, there is s fair percentage of liberal thought. To the East of the Cascades, it's pretty much a Dependent Territory of Idaho.
The "people starving" issue is more about politics and distribution. Sending money/food relief that largely goes to the corrupt regimes causing the problem in the first place only exacerbates the problem.
Remember what most MP3 players looked like before the iPod? I'm not just talking about the general ugliness of some of them, but the way the interface was designed specifically to appeal to people who LOVE high-tech gagetry, and think the Windows file manager is downright spiffy.
My first music player was a Creative Nomad II MG. Even after owning it for a year, I couldn't skip songs or navigate the content without grabbing it and looking at it. The dreadful UI had buttons lined up vertically on both sides of the device -- worse than the navigation issues, it was stupidly easy to accidentally delete songs. Within two years it was just a dust collector. The device itself was $250 and an extra memory card about $100. By the same token, the first time I picked up an iPod in a store, it was obious with less than 60 seconds of button pressing how the thing worked. With a little familiarity, it's a snap to operate without looking (nice feature when driving).
About a year ago, I saw some refurb 3g 15gb ipods on sale someplace for $190, I bought one. It wasn't because of commercials (I don't watch TV). It wasn't because of iTunes (although admitedly, I have fallen prey to the ITMS crack -- but I recovered after an emusic intervention). I just wanted to put my CDs on a useable device and the iPod fit the bill.
Troll? unfair mod for an opinion. You might be interested in this story from This American Life: Habeas Schmabeas. There is an intereseting segment (at about 32.5 minutes ) about Britain's foray into secret offshore prisons in the 1600s as a response to religiously motivated violent terrorism by fundementalists who believed that by destroying the government, Jesus would come back to earth (e.g., Puritans).
And may I introduce you to Merriam Webster which apparently provides more nuance than Answers.com. Note that the primary definition of literate is "can read and write". The secondary definition refers to writing of exceptional quality. Intersting for this topic however, the 3rd example under the secondary definition is "computer literate".
What kinds of kids make up the class? If this is a class of future technology workers, it will mean something much different than if it's a class of future secretarys. I was reading through the comments and tending to favor the ones that would require more knowledge, but then it occured to me that none of that even came into my head when I was interviewing people to be a secretary. All I cared about was whether she could use email, browser, word processor, and calendar (FN1). It's now suddenly obvious to me that "literate" refers only to the basics. By extension, when we say a person is "literate" (in the reading and writing context), we usually mean the person has the essential basic reading/writing skills (although a Ph.D. in English Lit. may be praised for a literate work -- the context clearly differentiates that use of "literate"). Teach to your students' future roles in life, whatever they may be.
(FN1) As an aside, it turns out that using the basic MS office apps is training enough for making the transition to the apps you'd find in a recent Gnome based DE. I didn't even bring up the fact she wouldn't be using windows in the interview. Stuck her in front of the machine and spent 15 minutes or so saying "this is your email application, and this your...". Jeez, computers are just too easy anymore. It's depressing.
Re: opinion in favor of windowsXP-centric knowledge
I don't think it matters what GUI based system a person learns. I hired someone fresh out of community college as an assistant recently. I think I spent 10 or 15 minutes showing her Openoffice, Nautilus, and Evolution. She's using all the stuff I need her to use just fine despite probably having never even heard the word "linux" before. The reason for this is that there is some level of consistency between all GUI apps.
As an employer, I don't really care if the person got their GUI experience on Windows, *nix, OSX, or something way out in left field. As long as the person can apply concepts to the program, they'll be fine. By concepts I mean things like this: you know you want to change a default setting so you will look for the option in places like "settings" or "options" or "preferences" or whatever semi-synonymous word the developer chose to use. Learn to apply concepts rather than steps, and it doesn't matter where you picked up your knowledge.
I'm old enough to have used DR-DOS, Geoworks, and BBSs (the real kind you dialed into with a modem). I remember when Delphi started offering internet access (Delphi was solely text based -- still got porn just fine (thank you uudecode)). But I have trouble remembering what a pain it was to gather information -- to actually have to drive a long way to find a good library.
Anyway, you are absolutely correct: internet search rocks. The amount of information available on an immediate basis just blows my mind.
The Klein documents are completely different than copyrighted content. These documents, presuming the gag order is lifted at some point, will be part of the public record. Secondly, the author and EFF is trying to get these in the public record but are being prevented from such action by nefarious third parties (AT&T, US Gov't). Fortunately, we can still do an end run around our government. Now, I have my copy of the Klein documents safe and sound but what if Wired pulled them? Other people deserve to have this information as well -- it's authors are begging for it to be free and placed in public domain as a court record -- they just need help because of the powerful forces arrayed against them.
I have the last g4 powerbook and ibook as well as the last g3 color ibook. Both the g4s have the airport card which does b/g, and the color ibook only does b. All of them connect flawlessly using WPA to a basic consumer Netgear wireless router and also to a wrt54g (version 2 I think). A while back before my Siemens Speedstream died, I had some issue with WEP which was solved by prepending "$" to the WEP key when entering it into the mac.
I could get used to it. My first computer was a TRS-80 color computer (with 16k). This was a fairly early model with a "chicklet" keyboard. Note, mine was like the silver model, not the white one.
Did we RT same FA?? Remember, the MB tested had a faster processor than the MBP. For what it's worth, here is an excerpt from page 6:
The graphics on the MacBooks and especially the MacBook Pro really shine in the Cinebench tests. The slightly faster processor on the MacBook results in the software lighting numbers to win here, but the MacBook Pro's graphics hardware is clearly superior, and the hardware rendering numbers bear that out
Here is an article with an overclocked FX-60. It's hard to make direct comparisons between the articles but look at the quake results. In the Bit-Tech Core Duo article linked in the summary, Quake 4 1280x1024 high quality: FX60 gets 119.5 fps and overclocked T2600 gets 124.4.
In the article I linked to, quake 4 at 1024x768 high quality, base FX60=162 and when overclocked, 173.6. In other words, overclocking the FX60 gives 106.8% the performace over factory settings on this test.
Going back to the article cited in the summary, multiplying the FX60's score from the Bit-tech article by the overclocking boost from the overclocking article suggests that an overclocked FX60 could be expected to score 127.6 fps.
Obviously, it's not all so simple, but there is an obvious bias in an article that fails to compare overclocked chips to overclocked chips.
The need to reboot the Vonage box is the single biggest complaint I have.
I was having a problem at work where the phone adapters would crash and then not receive calls. Turning them on and off settled the problem, but it kept coming back. Of course, nobody would have a clue phones were down until trying to make a call. Pretty unacceptable. I solved that issue by buying a timer people use for christmas lights and such. I set the timer to turn off at 3:00 am and back on 3:01 am. Haven't had a problem since then.... except that now I'm a victim of the current "can't receive calls" issue that the west coast is suffering. My clients call and get a message that all circuits are busy, or that the phone is out of service, or just a busy signal, or worse, it rings and we'll pick up and the line is dead. I'm sort of bummed -- Qwest will be by on Tuesday to hook me back into the old school phone system but I can't afford to have an unreliable phone ever, and the vonage savings pale in comparison to the cost of my yellow page ad. If my phone is telling people I'm out of business, well, that's one hell of an issue for me.
That said, I'm keeping my home service with vonage, but my home phone is pretty unimportant.
But are you aware that you can always press the middle mouse button on a tab to close it?
Actually no I'm not aware. And fact is, you're dead wrong. I don't if it works like this on other OSes but in Linux, if you highlight some text, press middle button, it pastes that into the url bar and goes there. so if you something like wwww.somesite.com -- not made into an actual link -- just double click the text, middle click and you're there. It works with words too, for example, if I saw the word IBM, I could double click middle click and bam, I'm at IBM's site (works even though the comma at the end of IBM gets selected). But middle clicking on a tab defintely doesn't close it. Besides, even if it did work, it still creates a moving target of resizing tabs.
So you and all you others: stop with the BS about tabs closing with middle click. That is not universal.
FWIW, I'm with you. Having close buttons on tabs is a horrible experience when doing any sort of intensive googling. I commonly have so many tabs open you can't even see the text. I know in Safari the tab size hits a minimum and then scrolls off to the side. That blows too.
Tabs in Safari have the close button on the tab. I hate it. With the close button in the corner, I have to aim the mouse pointer one time. When the close button is constantly moving, it's just plain old harder to be efficient. Plus, I find when I'm closing many tabs I often close one I don't want when using Safari. I hope they let the user choose and keep the upper right close button in place AND have the tab located button as well. They could even set it up in preferences so the user could choose one or the other or both. That way, everyone's personal preference is served.
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Same here. I almost agreed to buy shares but in the end, chickened out. When I first heard about the chance to get in on the IPO, I was excited and decided I wanted X shares. Then I read all the warnings and skimmed the prospectus and decided that X/2 shares might be a better idea. Then I looked at the news and back at the prospectus again and decided I should get even fewer shares. Then I fell victim to the problem Vonage had where people calling in would get a message that your phone was out of service --- I decided to bag it at that point.
Good luck enforcing your judgment in Dubai. If the buyer is to be believed, it took two months for Amir to mail the laptop after he was paid, it wasn't as described ... besides not working, e.g., 1/4 the advertised memory, and Amir had left the country.
Secondly, let's say you do get a judgment against someone -- you are out your filing fee, the costs of getting the judgment recognized by a foreign court (and in the States, this means in another state even), and the costs associated with collections. And good luck collecting anyway. Fact is, the perfect fraud is to sell a laptop on ebay to an out of state buyer for $300. Oh, and more good luck proving the laptop wasn't damaged in the mail -- in other words, to prove fraud you'll have to prove the seller lied about it's functionality. Care to bet he says it worked fine before mailing and "oh look, I clearly stated I'm not responsible for shipping damage".
I once bought a laptop on ebay. Completely not as described in a bad way (slower processor). I'm bitter.
You're absolutely right about the "navigate" term -- I meant "skip" but as I already used that word, "navigate" would naturally take a different meaning. To be clear, changing playlists on the ipod is hopelessly dangerous while driving -- skipping songs is really easy. After I wrote the post I was a bit embarrassed because it sounds so "fanboy". Any device with relatively large skip forward/back buttons will be easy to use in the car. I just happened across an ipod at a good price so I got it. All that said, I can't say often enough how awful the Creative Nomad MG II's interface was. It was practically unusable and forever soured me on Creative Crap (tm). Did I mention it was the worst UI I've ever experienced? I have $350 worth of bitterness to get out over that magnesium turd.
There are two Washingtons. To the west of the Cascades, there is s fair percentage of liberal thought. To the East of the Cascades, it's pretty much a Dependent Territory of Idaho.
The "people starving" issue is more about politics and distribution. Sending money/food relief that largely goes to the corrupt regimes causing the problem in the first place only exacerbates the problem.
About a year ago, I saw some refurb 3g 15gb ipods on sale someplace for $190, I bought one. It wasn't because of commercials (I don't watch TV). It wasn't because of iTunes (although admitedly, I have fallen prey to the ITMS crack -- but I recovered after an emusic intervention). I just wanted to put my CDs on a useable device and the iPod fit the bill.
Also works w/ normal acrobat for linux.
Troll? unfair mod for an opinion. You might be interested in this story from This American Life: Habeas Schmabeas. There is an intereseting segment (at about 32.5 minutes ) about Britain's foray into secret offshore prisons in the 1600s as a response to religiously motivated violent terrorism by fundementalists who believed that by destroying the government, Jesus would come back to earth (e.g., Puritans).
And may I introduce you to Merriam Webster which apparently provides more nuance than Answers.com. Note that the primary definition of literate is "can read and write". The secondary definition refers to writing of exceptional quality. Intersting for this topic however, the 3rd example under the secondary definition is "computer literate".
no ponies?? ..... sniff
(FN1) As an aside, it turns out that using the basic MS office apps is training enough for making the transition to the apps you'd find in a recent Gnome based DE. I didn't even bring up the fact she wouldn't be using windows in the interview. Stuck her in front of the machine and spent 15 minutes or so saying "this is your email application, and this your
Re: opinion in favor of windowsXP-centric knowledge
I don't think it matters what GUI based system a person learns. I hired someone fresh out of community college as an assistant recently. I think I spent 10 or 15 minutes showing her Openoffice, Nautilus, and Evolution. She's using all the stuff I need her to use just fine despite probably having never even heard the word "linux" before. The reason for this is that there is some level of consistency between all GUI apps.
As an employer, I don't really care if the person got their GUI experience on Windows, *nix, OSX, or something way out in left field. As long as the person can apply concepts to the program, they'll be fine. By concepts I mean things like this: you know you want to change a default setting so you will look for the option in places like "settings" or "options" or "preferences" or whatever semi-synonymous word the developer chose to use. Learn to apply concepts rather than steps, and it doesn't matter where you picked up your knowledge.
Search is the uber-killer app.
I'm old enough to have used DR-DOS, Geoworks, and BBSs (the real kind you dialed into with a modem). I remember when Delphi started offering internet access (Delphi was solely text based -- still got porn just fine (thank you uudecode)). But I have trouble remembering what a pain it was to gather information -- to actually have to drive a long way to find a good library.
Anyway, you are absolutely correct: internet search rocks. The amount of information available on an immediate basis just blows my mind.
(I should be on Letterman)
The Klein documents are completely different than copyrighted content. These documents, presuming the gag order is lifted at some point, will be part of the public record. Secondly, the author and EFF is trying to get these in the public record but are being prevented from such action by nefarious third parties (AT&T, US Gov't). Fortunately, we can still do an end run around our government. Now, I have my copy of the Klein documents safe and sound but what if Wired pulled them? Other people deserve to have this information as well -- it's authors are begging for it to be free and placed in public domain as a court record -- they just need help because of the powerful forces arrayed against them.
I have the last g4 powerbook and ibook as well as the last g3 color ibook. Both the g4s have the airport card which does b/g, and the color ibook only does b. All of them connect flawlessly using WPA to a basic consumer Netgear wireless router and also to a wrt54g (version 2 I think). A while back before my Siemens Speedstream died, I had some issue with WEP which was solved by prepending "$" to the WEP key when entering it into the mac.
I could get used to it. My first computer was a TRS-80 color computer (with 16k). This was a fairly early model with a "chicklet" keyboard. Note, mine was like the silver model, not the white one.
Here is an article with an overclocked FX-60. It's hard to make direct comparisons between the articles but look at the quake results. In the Bit-Tech Core Duo article linked in the summary, Quake 4 1280x1024 high quality: FX60 gets 119.5 fps and overclocked T2600 gets 124.4.
In the article I linked to, quake 4 at 1024x768 high quality, base FX60=162 and when overclocked, 173.6. In other words, overclocking the FX60 gives 106.8% the performace over factory settings on this test.
Going back to the article cited in the summary, multiplying the FX60's score from the Bit-tech article by the overclocking boost from the overclocking article suggests that an overclocked FX60 could be expected to score 127.6 fps.
Obviously, it's not all so simple, but there is an obvious bias in an article that fails to compare overclocked chips to overclocked chips.
It's worth noting that the comparison is between the FX-60 running at factory speed, and a Core Duo running overclocked.
That said, I'm keeping my home service with vonage, but my home phone is pretty unimportant.
So you and all you others: stop with the BS about tabs closing with middle click. That is not universal.
FWIW, I'm with you. Having close buttons on tabs is a horrible experience when doing any sort of intensive googling. I commonly have so many tabs open you can't even see the text. I know in Safari the tab size hits a minimum and then scrolls off to the side. That blows too.
Tabs in Safari have the close button on the tab. I hate it. With the close button in the corner, I have to aim the mouse pointer one time. When the close button is constantly moving, it's just plain old harder to be efficient. Plus, I find when I'm closing many tabs I often close one I don't want when using Safari. I hope they let the user choose and keep the upper right close button in place AND have the tab located button as well. They could even set it up in preferences so the user could choose one or the other or both. That way, everyone's personal preference is served.