I'm sorry, but unless and until every browser has the "extensions" feature that FF has (Specifically including Adblock Plus and No Script) then NO browser will EVER be a true "Firefox Killer".
Chrome is OK, but without extensions it's nothing more than a runner-up. The same for Opera and IE#. Safari is nothing more than a side-show.
How very true. Firefox has a big thingy going for it; It's been there long enough to appear on the corporate world screens.....If you are the CTO equivalent in any mid sized company, and you lack the resources to assist people using IE, you want something that is a) known, b) it does not crash the operating system with it when it crashes, c) customizable in some way or other. I have been using Firefox for a longish time now, and while all the non-IE browsers share the most important quality (i.e, they're not in the merciless hands of people who would entagle some rich new feature with some freakish new operating system you would not give free to Osama Bin Laden), only firefox has a sufficiently large installed base to make it a target for some development. More users = more extensions = more users......why go further? it's Apple's App store without Some Apple restricting access. So no, if anything I think Firefox will snowball out of control... BTW, Here in Italy there's a new ad campaign by Microsoft touting how safe IE8 is......that means MS is already gone in survival mode.
[...]Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
It's easier to detect nukes than other weapons of mass destruction. That's part of the reason why the US has always mantained that Nukes were interchangeable with Bacteriological or chemical weapons, i.e. a chemical attack would have possibly attracted a nuclear response. Personally I think that the obsession with nukes is rather misguided, since the usefulness of the threat of first use is too good to pass up: if (any) enemy wants to get in close, he cannot concentrate its forces if he thinks that it would attract a nuke. If I remember correctly, a Russian armored division could be concentrated in 10 km in ordinary circumstances: under the nuclear threat, this number went up fourfold.
[...]Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic towards banning acts considered serious crimes in real life from being the subject of a game (by which I mean games requiring players to act out these types of crimes).[...]
Excuse my asking, but is "war" a crime? I regularly play Call of Duty 4, and my sixteen year old son does as well. We are both history buffs, especially war history; I served in the military, in a Police force, which meant pondering about when and how to draw an handgun and point it at a person in civilian clothing, with the possibility if not the intent of shooting to kill...So I know that the absence of violence is only a delegation of violence. Since Switzerland is a nice and peaceful country, with a full complement of conscript Army and police forces, I'd expect them not close their eyes to the fact that individuals can forego violence, but only if they divest it to someone else, usually the state.
As a swiss I think that ban isn't solving the problem. We still have a conscription army which hands out an assault rifle to every male citizen over the age of 20.
I live in Italy, and I recall when a small town next to where I live voted a similar "nuclear free" resolution. It was late in the Carter Presidency, when the then USSR was building SS-20 missiles hand over fist. Now this town sat about 20 miles away from a big city(pop. 1 million) and 100 miles east from the nearest French nuclear plant(prevailing winds in northwest Italy come from there). The SS20 was by its nature (min range 600 km, three 150 Kt MIRV warheads etc) a "Countercity" weapon, so I used to joke with these morons that now they were lightyears away from producing nuclear energy, but they were paying through their noses to buy it (and still are, BTW), all the while being between 7 and 20 minutes from seeing a mushroom cloud right next to them. Ain't humanity fun?
That fits with my idea that the standard politician idea of going after bankers' salaries and bonuses is moronic.
Not going after banker's salaries and bonuses is moronic. If these guys can reward themselves with enormous compensation by taking enormous risks...they will take enormous risks. Breaking up the banks will stop them from blowing up the entire world economy, but not putting limits on their compensation means will will still have plenty of blow ups - they'll just be smaller ones that take out investors and depositors (that other banks and taxpayers will have to eat through FDIC).
Bear with me a moment: all banks and quasibanks are monitored by their respective central banks, which does limit their risk appetite by setting the amount of own capital these entities must set aside for each trade. What I found moronic from the start is that central bankers let these people lend money for risky speculations with LESS capital set aside than for ordinary business. believe me, no banker has a risk appetite if the central bankers say: "Free to lend money to hedge funds....with a 500% own capital coefficient relative to lending to and industrial entity".
Gee, go home already! Give your guys a chance to goof off for a few minutes without their boss around!
A good boss understands that goofing off a little, especially when working extended hours, is pretty much a requirement to relieving stress and enhances productivity.
I think that one of the foremost duties of such a boss is to ENSURE that people do not burnout at the desk, so he has to provide some entertainment value, especially if he has the ability to sense the pace of work, i.e. come in when people are in a relative doldrum.
No, not a good idea. What is the point in having a Cultural Revolution? Better to just split these companies which are too big to fail into smaller chunks, kick out the top management making sure they never work in that capacity anymore, enforce layers of separation between businesses and let them free. Restore the Glass–Steagall Act and separate commercial banking from investment banking.
That fits with my idea that the standard politician idea of going after bankers' salaries and bonuses is moronic. The crux of the problem is how fat the BANKS get, not how they pay bigwigs.
One more comment: all governments seem bent on getting aid money back from the banking system ASAP, and the Herds are mooing that that's a good thing; but if you consider that the regulations of the banking system is more or less what it was when Lehman went under, central bankers included, I see it more as a "blank check " for keeping regulation lax ( or stupid, witness Basel II ); It would be very difficult for governments to press for reenacting the Glass- Steagall act, which would permanently erase excess profits at realities like Goldman Sachs, all the while asking the same companies to make those excess profits in order to repay the Government.
I found out recently a reseller here in Italy distributing the Ncomputing client, which strictly speaking is not a computer, rather a screen repeater; I've had the occasion to try it , and it worked fine for a small office, especially if there are security considerations involved, since there's an actual box that does not have an USB port; there' s no way to take data out except via email. The price is quite reasonable, and for the vast majority of office work it's vastly simpler than virtualization via the usual suspects.
In Italy, where I live, it is illegal to set up an unprotected wifi point, but since the vast majority of ADSL modem/routers are sold to homes or small businesses, I see a lot of unprotected access points, with names like "D-link "; I doubt that getting people to use robust passwords would work as well as having them use ANY password.
....is Internet Explorer?........aaaahh, that buggy browser that comes with windows. I stopped using it four years ago and deleted the icon.
Seriously tough, I think that when people choose to use a browser that messes with system internals above other browsers that are NOT messing with the kernel, they get what they ultimately deserve. I remember a particularly buggy period that really had me going definitely over to Firefox: whenever IE crashed, I had to reboot. With firefox, killing the program would suffice, and I had far fewer problems anyway.
One more thing to add to what maharb said: do a "question type " session with them , going both ways. In this way, you'll understand better what the key issues are for the business model, and they'll understand better how to leverage IT for the business. There's another plus in doing it this way: If you are forthcoming in asking questions pertaining the company business model, they'll find it easier to ask questions regarding IT. Many people are afraid to do that, and you have to nudge them along; showing that you do not have cyborg arms and a hive mind is a good starting point.
When I do training courses, I always start with the phrase: "there are no stupid questions". If you can start them along that line, you'll have a much easier time on the job. It's also a good litmus test of the organization, because it takes balls for an executive to say " I do not know, and I would like to."
Most likely, they made this decision so that they can use server-side copy protection (aka, Show me valid cd-key, bitch!), not unlike Starcraft2 removal of LAN gameplay in favor of battlenet, so expect centralized system. Otherwise, there is no point.
So, you will be out of luck with piratey thing unless piratey people take time to write their own servers.
I think that actually the most active players and Clans are usually piracy - free, insofar that they tax themselves to pay for servers, websites and such, so the actual cost of the game is a fraction of the cost of the experience. Most probably, this is a PHB's reaction to the fact that the games generates turnover for other people, with nothing accruig to the company.....except the remarkable lack of piracy in clan-based games. They probably prefer single-player gaming, i'd say:D.
The idea of the long barreled cannon is that it can spread out the acceleration of the object over its travel down the length of the barrel, rather than relying on a short rapid acceleration that would be likely to cause damage.
it is a bit more complicated. the trebuchet uses a falling weight, but it also uses a sling- like attachment, which makes it far more efficient. Moreover, it is more precise, since the structure does not have to stop the lever. For more infirmation, see http://www.trebuchet.com/
It is a well know fact that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu exclusively at home, and only trots out the pro-Windows stance when paid to by Microsoft, so none of this should be taken seriously. Not that anyone sensible would take anyone saying 'Windows is good!' seriously.
do not count on it. In Italy, where I live, a former Finance minister, while he was in office, went public saying that taxes are very beautiful. Other people's opinions are a perpetual source of amazement.
I've been working in corporate environment, and the terminal stage for me is really perceived as the steady, apex-state for the organizations. I usually observe these developments:
1. inward looking bias: the company is NEVER, at any stage, actively looking at its business in relation to objective realities. This gives a sense of control over its own destiny, akin to throwing the outboard motor into the sea because map reading is difficult.
2. since reality intrudes sometimes, a well cohordinated system of committee sterilizes the possibility to learn from mistakes; a good committee, as you may know, is something that uses time and resources to say "We've done the best that could be done, and the failure was due to unforseeable circumstances; proceed as before";
3. to avoid the possibility that the frontier parts of the organizations do an internal takeover, a good feudal system is essential. you must be able to dangle promotion to sinecures in front of those that have to face reality day by day;
The promotion system is like a priesthood: the first requirement is an ability and willingness to believe. Ability gets only disbelief
I fully second that. I subscribe to the wall street journal online, , and non subscribers can see the title and first phrases of the article; I can see the whole content, for what I think is an adequate fee. I do not see why any publisher who posts the entire content free on the Internet can have anything bad to say to the googles of the world.
Unless it's his office, he'll use what he's told. His IT department will administer the box, including anti virus, network permissions, rebuilding from an image if/when the hard disk dies etc. They're not going to spend 4 days downloading, installing and configuring random crap for every employee just so they can feel at home!
I wish I could do the same on my desktop in the office.
Out of curiosity, why can't you? Are you stuck with a Windows only software package? (I'm not asking rhetorically. )[...]
I'll answer: it IS my office, but my partners are are all bread and butter "office" people (their worth lies elsewhere). I am stuck to office because our main information provider, Bloomberg , does not offer to laymen any alternative; the target machine is WIN XP SP3 ( which by itself is interesting), office 2003 and a browser. Via DDE, it's possible to link data to open office spreadsheets, but the main App is MS only.
Having read the article, and having traded equities on the London Stock exchange and Borsa Italiana for twenty years, I must say that I believe that the declaration that it was not a performance issue is correct.....to the point that I suspect that no amount of performance gains on Microsoft's part would have turned the scales. Stock Exchanges are not national monopolies anymore, even if the few remaining big ones are gobbling each other. Controlling the technology involved is much more important than a slight performance hit. The London stock exchange scores a double hit on this one, since not only it will own the system, but the internals of said system will be open source, freeing it for example from limitation of sale to third parties by the US government. And anyway, when an istitution that big uses only Microsoft inhouse, is like having another stakeholder on your back, with an agenda of its own, like having you switch soon to the latest and greatest of its Server suite, if only for its publicity value. By doing the move, LSE is back to setting its own pace. I wish I could do the same on my desktop in the office.
we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?
And nine women could have a baby in 1 month.
Don't tell the PHB's, they'll try to lobby for poligamy in no time. On a more serious note, think about this: if you tell that phrase to any adult, it's a joke; if you tell it to a 4 years old, it's not, and his/her parents will give you hell for the rest of the week.
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I'm sorry, but unless and until every browser has the "extensions" feature that FF has (Specifically including Adblock Plus and No Script) then NO browser will EVER be a true "Firefox Killer".
Chrome is OK, but without extensions it's nothing more than a runner-up. The same for Opera and IE#. Safari is nothing more than a side-show.
How very true. Firefox has a big thingy going for it; It's been there long enough to appear on the corporate world screens.....If you are the CTO equivalent in any mid sized company, and you lack the resources to assist people using IE, you want something that is a) known, b) it does not crash the operating system with it when it crashes, c) customizable in some way or other.
I have been using Firefox for a longish time now, and while all the non-IE browsers share the most important quality (i.e, they're not in the merciless hands of people who would entagle some rich new feature with some freakish new operating system you would not give free to Osama Bin Laden), only firefox has a sufficiently large installed base to make it a target for some development. More users = more extensions = more users......why go further? it's Apple's App store without Some Apple restricting access. So no, if anything I think Firefox will snowball out of control...
BTW, Here in Italy there's a new ad campaign by Microsoft touting how safe IE8 is......that means MS is already gone in survival mode.
[...]Dudes always seemed to just do a once-over with what I assume was a radiation detector in a van driving around base, and then break for vodka around noon.
It's easier to detect nukes than other weapons of mass destruction. That's part of the reason why the US has always mantained that Nukes were interchangeable with Bacteriological or chemical weapons, i.e. a chemical attack would have possibly attracted a nuclear response.
Personally I think that the obsession with nukes is rather misguided, since the usefulness of the threat of first use is too good to pass up: if (any) enemy wants to get in close, he cannot concentrate its forces if he thinks that it would attract a nuke. If I remember correctly, a Russian armored division could be concentrated in 10 km in ordinary circumstances: under the nuclear threat, this number went up fourfold.
Hang on! let me get my giant barcode out of my pocket!
that reminds me of Robin Williams doing his Adam and Eve sketch....."Stand back honey, I do not know how big this can get!!"
[...]Personally, I am somewhat sympathetic towards banning acts considered serious crimes in real life from being the subject of a game (by which I mean games requiring players to act out these types of crimes).[...]
Excuse my asking, but is "war" a crime? I regularly play Call of Duty 4, and my sixteen year old son does as well. We are both history buffs, especially war history; I served in the military, in a Police force, which meant pondering about when and how to draw an handgun and point it at a person in civilian clothing, with the possibility if not the intent of shooting to kill...So I know that the absence of violence is only a delegation of violence. Since Switzerland is a nice and peaceful country, with a full complement of conscript Army and police forces, I'd expect them not close their eyes to the fact that individuals can forego violence, but only if they divest it to someone else, usually the state.
As a swiss I think that ban isn't solving the problem. We still have a conscription army which hands out an assault rifle to every male citizen over the age of 20.
That's Violent games release 1.1.
I live in Italy, and I recall when a small town next to where I live voted a similar "nuclear free" resolution. It was late in the Carter Presidency, when the then USSR was building SS-20 missiles hand over fist.
Now this town sat about 20 miles away from a big city(pop. 1 million) and 100 miles east from the nearest French nuclear plant(prevailing winds in northwest Italy come from there). The SS20 was by its nature (min range 600 km, three 150 Kt MIRV warheads etc) a "Countercity" weapon, so I used to joke with these morons that now they were lightyears away from producing nuclear energy, but they were paying through their noses to buy it (and still are, BTW), all the while being between 7 and 20 minutes from seeing a mushroom cloud right next to them. Ain't humanity fun?
That fits with my idea that the standard politician idea of going after bankers' salaries and bonuses is moronic.
Not going after banker's salaries and bonuses is moronic. If these guys can reward themselves with enormous compensation by taking enormous risks...they will take enormous risks. Breaking up the banks will stop them from blowing up the entire world economy, but not putting limits on their compensation means will will still have plenty of blow ups - they'll just be smaller ones that take out investors and depositors (that other banks and taxpayers will have to eat through FDIC).
Bear with me a moment: all banks and quasibanks are monitored by their respective central banks, which does limit their risk appetite by setting the amount of own capital these entities must set aside for each trade. What I found moronic from the start is that central bankers let these people lend money for risky speculations with LESS capital set aside than for ordinary business.
believe me, no banker has a risk appetite if the central bankers say: "Free to lend money to hedge funds....with a 500% own capital coefficient relative to lending to and industrial entity".
Gee, go home already! Give your guys a chance to goof off for a few minutes without their boss around!
A good boss understands that goofing off a little, especially when working extended hours, is pretty much a requirement to relieving stress and enhances productivity.
I think that one of the foremost duties of such a boss is to ENSURE that people do not burnout at the desk, so he has to provide some entertainment value, especially if he has the ability to sense the pace of work, i.e. come in when people are in a relative doldrum.
No, not a good idea. What is the point in having a Cultural Revolution? Better to just split these companies which are too big to fail into smaller chunks, kick out the top management making sure they never work in that capacity anymore, enforce layers of separation between businesses and let them free. Restore the Glass–Steagall Act and separate commercial banking from investment banking.
That fits with my idea that the standard politician idea of going after bankers' salaries and bonuses is moronic. The crux of the problem is how fat the BANKS get, not how they pay bigwigs.
One more comment: all governments seem bent on getting aid money back from the banking system ASAP, and the Herds are mooing that that's a good thing; but if you consider that the regulations of the banking system is more or less what it was when Lehman went under, central bankers included, I see it more as a "blank check " for keeping regulation lax ( or stupid, witness Basel II ); It would be very difficult for governments to press for reenacting the Glass- Steagall act, which would permanently erase excess profits at realities like Goldman Sachs, all the while asking the same companies to make those excess profits in order to repay the Government.
I found out recently a reseller here in Italy distributing the Ncomputing client, which strictly speaking is not a computer, rather a screen repeater; I've had the occasion to try it , and it worked fine for a small office, especially if there are security considerations involved, since there's an actual box that does not have an USB port; there' s no way to take data out except via email.
The price is quite reasonable, and for the vast majority of office work it's vastly simpler than virtualization via the usual suspects.
In Italy, where I live, it is illegal to set up an unprotected wifi point, but since the vast majority of ADSL modem/routers are sold to homes or small businesses, I see a lot of unprotected access points, with names like "D-link "; I doubt that getting people to use robust passwords would work as well as having them use ANY password.
I am not a lawyer (and I use Acronyms sparingly), but stealing accounts from other phishers may be a DMCA violation!!!
...NASA saw this!!!
In all fairness, they should declare it unplayable and drop it elsewhere in the trap, as per Rule 28.
....is Internet Explorer?........aaaahh, that buggy browser that comes with windows. I stopped using it four years ago and deleted the icon.
Seriously tough, I think that when people choose to use a browser that messes with system internals above other browsers that are NOT messing with the kernel, they get what they ultimately deserve. I remember a particularly buggy period that really had me going definitely over to Firefox: whenever IE crashed, I had to reboot. With firefox, killing the program would suffice, and I had far fewer problems anyway.
One more thing to add to what maharb said: do a "question type " session with them , going both ways. In this way, you'll understand better what the key issues are for the business model, and they'll understand better how to leverage IT for the business.
There's another plus in doing it this way: If you are forthcoming in asking questions pertaining the company business model, they'll find it easier to ask questions regarding IT. Many people are afraid to do that, and you have to nudge them along; showing that you do not have cyborg arms and a hive mind is a good starting point.
When I do training courses, I always start with the phrase: "there are no stupid questions". If you can start them along that line, you'll have a much easier time on the job. It's also a good litmus test of the organization, because it takes balls for an executive to say " I do not know, and I would like to."
Most likely, they made this decision so that they can use server-side copy protection (aka, Show me valid cd-key, bitch!), not unlike Starcraft2 removal of LAN gameplay in favor of battlenet, so expect centralized system. Otherwise, there is no point.
So, you will be out of luck with piratey thing unless piratey people take time to write their own servers.
I think that actually the most active players and Clans are usually piracy - free, insofar that they tax themselves to pay for servers, websites and such, so the actual cost of the game is a fraction of the cost of the experience. :D.
Most probably, this is a PHB's reaction to the fact that the games generates turnover for other people, with nothing accruig to the company.....except the remarkable lack of piracy in clan-based games. They probably prefer single-player gaming, i'd say
A catapult uses a spring of some sort.
A trebuchet uses a falling weight.
The idea of the long barreled cannon is that it can spread out the acceleration of the object over its travel down the length of the barrel, rather than relying on a short rapid acceleration that would be likely to cause damage.
it is a bit more complicated. the trebuchet uses a falling weight, but it also uses a sling- like attachment, which makes it far more efficient. Moreover, it is more precise, since the structure does not have to stop the lever.
For more infirmation, see http://www.trebuchet.com/
It is a well know fact that Michael Dell uses Ubuntu exclusively at home, and only trots out the pro-Windows stance when paid to by Microsoft, so none of this should be taken seriously. Not that anyone sensible would take anyone saying 'Windows is good!' seriously.
do not count on it. In Italy, where I live, a former Finance minister, while he was in office, went public saying that taxes are very beautiful.
Other people's opinions are a perpetual source of amazement.
I've been working in corporate environment, and the terminal stage for me is really perceived as the steady, apex-state for the organizations. I usually observe these developments:
1. inward looking bias: the company is NEVER, at any stage, actively looking at its business in relation to objective realities. This gives a sense of control over its own destiny, akin to throwing the outboard motor into the sea because map reading is difficult.
2. since reality intrudes sometimes, a well cohordinated system of committee sterilizes the possibility to learn from mistakes; a good committee, as you may know, is something that uses time and resources to say "We've done the best that could be done, and the failure was due to unforseeable circumstances; proceed as before";
3. to avoid the possibility that the frontier parts of the organizations do an internal takeover, a good feudal system is essential. you must be able to dangle promotion to sinecures in front of those that have to face reality day by day;
The promotion system is like a priesthood: the first requirement is an ability and willingness to believe. Ability gets only disbelief
I fully second that. I subscribe to the wall street journal online, , and non subscribers can see the title and first phrases of the article; I can see the whole content, for what I think is an adequate fee. I do not see why any publisher who posts the entire content free on the Internet can have anything bad to say to the googles of the world.
now where does ludicrous speed enter the question?
Unless it's his office, he'll use what he's told. His IT department will administer the box, including anti virus, network permissions, rebuilding from an image if/when the hard disk dies etc. They're not going to spend 4 days downloading, installing and configuring random crap for every employee just so they can feel at home!
I wish I could do the same on my desktop in the office. Out of curiosity, why can't you? Are you stuck with a Windows only software package? (I'm not asking rhetorically. )[...]
I'll answer: it IS my office, but my partners are are all bread and butter "office" people (their worth lies elsewhere). I am stuck to office because our main information provider, Bloomberg , does not offer to laymen any alternative; the target machine is WIN XP SP3 ( which by itself is interesting), office 2003 and a browser. Via DDE, it's possible to link data to open office spreadsheets, but the main App is MS only.
Having read the article, and having traded equities on the London Stock exchange and Borsa Italiana for twenty years, I must say that I believe that the declaration that it was not a performance issue is correct.....to the point that I suspect that no amount of performance gains on Microsoft's part would have turned the scales.
Stock Exchanges are not national monopolies anymore, even if the few remaining big ones are gobbling each other. Controlling the technology involved is much more important than a slight performance hit. The London stock exchange scores a double hit on this one, since not only it will own the system, but the internals of said system will be open source, freeing it for example from limitation of sale to third parties by the US government. And anyway, when an istitution that big uses only Microsoft inhouse, is like having another stakeholder on your back, with an agenda of its own, like having you switch soon to the latest and greatest of its Server suite, if only for its publicity value. By doing the move, LSE is back to setting its own pace. I wish I could do the same on my desktop in the office.
we could higher two new grads and an intern for the same amount. They'd be at least that productive right?
And nine women could have a baby in 1 month.
Don't tell the PHB's, they'll try to lobby for poligamy in no time.
On a more serious note, think about this: if you tell that phrase to any adult, it's a joke; if you tell it to a 4 years old, it's not, and his/her parents will give you hell for the rest of the week.