You do know that Starship Troopers is a deliberate satire on the source material, right?
It's not perfect in its execution, but whilst you can (and I did when I first saw it as a young teenager) see it as just a gung-ho action movie that's basically content-free. When you then put it into the context of Heinleins original glorification of war and armed service it becomes clear that the film is actually a somewhat clever satire of the original, whilst also being entertaining and action-y enough to satisfy those that prefer not to think too much.
"Just because something can be abused for bad things, doesn't mean everyone involved in its creation are responsible for those bad things."
Hi, sorry if I gave the impression that I think either the product or the developers are in and of themselves evil. I think it's fantastic that this tech exists from a freedom point of view and from a crypto-geek point of view. I support people's rights to create and use software such as this, if they want to.
I'm just saying that I couldn't take part in good conscience.
I'm not advocating stopping the "free internet", I'm just saying I'm not going to use my resources to help you do something I find abhorrent.
As I said in another post - I'll certainly argue for your right to free speech, but that doesn't mean I'm going to hold your megaphone whilst you go on a violent, racist rant.
Similarly, I'll support the creation and defend the right to use programs such as these, but I'm damned if you'll use my computer to propagate CP.
"It is a "your with us" or "your against us" answer here. You CANNOT EVER apply your content filtering to data flowing through your node. It violates the very principles by which these networks were created."
Which is why I don't feel I can participate.
There *is* a middle ground in which to operate. It is possible to create a network in which you only connect to known third parties and (unless others have added extra encryption) see what's going across your node without knowing where it originated or what its destination is. That way you keep governments out of your data but don't provide resources for things you find morally abhorrent.
The fact that I believe in free speech is not contradicted by my refusal to propagate arbitrary information. I support your right to say what you want without harassment but I'm sure as hell not going to hold your megaphone whilst you advocate a child abuse/the return of slavery etc.
There is, unfortunately, a nugget of truth in there somewhere.
None of these sorts of things, AFAICT, let you monitor what's going through your node. And that's important to me. Whilst I support free speech and the rights of people to communicate without government interference, I'm damned if my resources are going to be used to propagate child pr0n.
I was with you until you said most people were date rapists and wife beaters.
If you had said drug users, speed-limit breakers, occasional drunk drivers, any of a variety of "social" crimes, fairly small (though drunk driving is quite a big thing) crimes that people do often without thinking.
Date rape and wife beating are not in the same category. If you think they're normal then you have problems.
Genuine question from someone wanting an iPod alternative - Which ones are fine and work well?
I'm looking for something that has over 32GB of flash (add-on SD cards are acceptable) and is small. Xen X-fi is the nearest I've got, but apparently it treats music on the SD card as a second-class citizen and doesn't offer the same functions on it as it will for the internal flash.
There is a unit at Southampton ECS that investigates a lot of these things. When I was there they were interested in gait recognition, though from the people linked from the page there it seems like this is more in the realm of the electronics side than the computer vision side.
Even TFS gives a use for it - verify that the person on the other end of the phone is who they say they are. Though I'd be surprised if standard phones would give enough resolution to be able to accurately gauge the biometric. If it even is a useful or reliable biometric.
"You have to look at the investing in the market long term. Sure, there are fluctuations, and corrections. But over the long haul...so far, it makes money. Sure, if it drops 50% right now...there are some losses, but, it will go back up."
And that would be fine if you had a long term choice of when to retire.
"What are they advertising?" was my first thought, then after I realised it was an experiment I moved on to "sooner or later someone will pervert this for advertising"
Once again, you're not who I was aiming the snark at.
If you have software that can't be moved, fine, no problem. It's the usual, somewhat trollish, "lunix teh suxx0r!" crowd I was aiming at, for whom PS is the fashionable excuse to avoid thinking too hard.
"It was probably creating a system restore point,"
No, it wasn't.
It tells you when it does that. Most of the time it just sits there doing fuck-all for a few minutes before it even downloads the updates, and pauses between each, and downloads them at a snail's pace. And even when it has them, it's three stage "Now I'm installing, now you must reboot so I can do more during shutdown and more again during startup" is painfully slow.
Does debian do an auto system restore? No, if I wanted that I could set it up. In this case windows is being far, far slower even without it, at every stage.
"ONE click, my friend. Or just hit ENTER, I know it entails pulling your hand out of the cheetoz-bag by for christ's, computers are all about sacrifice."
One click to do what?
I'm not talking about the FUCK-DAMNED box to elevate permissions. For the last FUCKING time. I don't care about that box.
Read my comments before replying next time. This is about Vista stopping the running of unsigned binaries at startup, amongst other things.
Oh sure, and I have a feeling that adobe even encouraged this by having a license provision specifically allowing people who use it at work to take it home and install a single instance on a machine there too. Helps keep it in its leadership position.
That said, I don't know many people that actually use it in a professional capacity either, and those that did were working in design/presentation/web stuff.
The platform thing is chicken and egg really. Which comes first, greater OS market share or porting of popular software?
Hey, in that case my snark wasn't aimed at you, I just don't believe that half as many people that use PS as a "why linux sucks" talking point actually have a license.
I'm not saying "OMG vista suxs! Use linux!", I just think that some of the barriers people erect to giving linux a decent try are artificial.
Only slow to boot if you have a ton of stuff loading too.
As I said in another post, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sony had b0rked it in some way, but I did try to strip out most of the cruft when I first got the machine.
uhm, the OS doesn't just blindly launch programs that aren't properly configured and your complaining?
Define "aren't properly configured"?
If you mean "aren't on the appropriate MS whitelist with no way to override or set up your own whitelist, then sure, it's badly configured. After the first time I should be able to add an exception, even if it requires digging through a few menus. You can't without just disabling UAC.
Would you rather the OS just went and installed that rootkit without checking with you first?
No, but I'd rather it didn't stop me doing things in situations where I know what I'm doing. It's my computer, not microsoft's.
Annoying? only if you don't understand that Administrator is a USER account with prompted escalation. Run as a User account and you get an admin login just like if you used sudo and all sub processes then run under that and silently allow.
Sorry, but that prompt is the least of the annoyances. I don't give a crap about that prompt or the user escalation, I care about actually having the ability to control the machine without being overruled with no way to change it short of disabling the whole of the new security subsystem.
Hey, I don't think Vista is "a failure" (except perhaps when compared against expected revenue), or teh w0rst OS evar! or anything like that, it just has some annoying features.
What is it with all the people on this site that jump on me for my legitimate problems with this OS?
I already said I'm surprised that it's the non-geeks that seem to have the worst reaction to it and I don't think it's all that bad.
"When you run Vista on the hardware that it was designed for (two cores and two gigs of RAM is about the minimum), it's easily the best released Windows yet, and you would be a fool to run XP on such a machine."
1. Why does it need so much?!?
2. Err, that pretty much describes my laptop. Vista does not behave well and Sony eventually released free XP downgrade disks due to demand. Not that I used them, I don't boot windows often enough for it to be an annoyance.
I disagree that it can be described as "best". I'm not going to label it a "failure", but I have yet to meet anyone IRL, geek or not, that actually wanted vista on their machine or had a good word to say about it.
Is it that old classic, Photoshop? Can I ask how much you paid for the license? Same with word?
Oh wait, you probably pirated them.
This is what annoys me about the whole "I can't move, there's no compatibility" crowd, they're usually crowing about software they have no rights to use in the first place.
"But GIMP just isn't the same"
Sure, but at least you're not commiting a crime (or is it a civil offence?) to obtain/use it.
"Who boots anymore? With sleep/suspend/hibernate, "booting" is so 1997."
I boot vista when I want to play a game. At that point the boot time is relevant.
So you've installed some wonky ext2 driver and it's Vista's fault when it doesn't load right on boot? Complain to the driver author instead:)
There should be a way for me, as administrator and owner, to tell it to allow things to start that aren't signed by MS. It's that simple.
Once a month you lose a whole *HOUR* to updates? *sigh* Don't update your *nix box for a month and see how long the next update takes.
Last time it was 19 updates. Came out somewhere around 32MB. I have a 24Mb connection, it took a long, long time to download them. It then sat and took the rest of the hour applying them, shutting down, applying some more during shutdown, booting and applying more during startup. And then it found more. It's slow and a bit of a shambles.
19 updates totalling around that size on debian linux would take a matter of seconds.
UAC is different that what you were talking about above and can be disabled. And probably should be disabled for "power users".
Yes, eventually I found out it could be disabled. I switched it off and some of the annoyances went away. Great, I have to switch off the new security system to get anything much done.
Anyway, sounds like you've made up your mind on your platform of choice. I won't try to convince you otherwise, it's just annoying with the amount of FUD here about Vista.
FUD. Right. User experience and me explaining my annoyances, despite already having said I don't think it's awful, just wrong in a few places, that's FUD?
I've got Ubuntu/Vista/XP all running, I try to use each for what they're best at. Which I think is the whole point of an OS. Use it for what it's good for; not because you're trying to make a political statement.
And you've already decided I'm some sort of Linux zealot despite my saying I use vista adequately well for what I need it for and I'm surprised by the hatred it gets from non-technical people.
"If it wasn't for the delay I have set in GRUB, Vista would be loaded before my monitor comes on. It loads faster than my SuSE or Fedora installs do."
Then you're lucky and I'm not. It takes much, much longer than debian on my VAIO. I'm not ruling out that Sony set it up badly, but quick it is not.
I've never had a problem with any startup programs.
You've never tried installing an ext2 filesystem driver then. Every boot I'd get this nice helpful message telling me windows had prevented programs from running at startup, with no visible way to change things.
I don't run automatic updates (except for Defender checking for definitions before it's 3:00 AM daily scan), but when I run updates myself it's generally fairly quick, depending on what's out there. It's much, much better than Windows Update on XP.
I never run them automatically. I only boot it about once a month and it never fails to take at least an hour to update. There's even an inexplicable delay of at least a couple of minutes between selecting the updates to apply and it even starting to download them.
The only time I see anything about access is when I, out of habit, click on one of those "junctions" (or whatever Vista calls them) instead of a real folder. [Junctions = the old paths, like the Application Data directory. You get an "access denied" if you try to click on one.]
As a UNIX weenie, that confuses and annoys me!
Those are hidden files anyway, so I can't see that being a problem for everyday users.
Well exactly, which is why I find it so surprising that it's my dad and various non-savvy friends that get most upset with the whole thing.
Vista is slow to boot. Vista helpfully stops me running programs I want to run at startup. Vista takes absolutely hours to update itself. Vista is always telling me no, I don't have permission to do that, or to look there. Vista is generally annoying.
Vista also has a couple of more geeky irritations to me as a software engineer and a linux user. But still, it runs my games OK and that's all I ask of it these days. I don't hate it, I just don't think it's that good.
That said, you should here the vitriol and emotional reactions that come out of my none-geek family and friends. This vista hatred may have started here with us, but it's been taken to a whole new level by the general computer-using-but-not-understanding public. I don't know if that's a reflection of them buying all the media hype or if it's a genuinbe reaction to the product, but it seems that it's no longer us penguin-loving kernel botherers that are the main source of the anti-MS vitriol.
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You do know that Starship Troopers is a deliberate satire on the source material, right?
It's not perfect in its execution, but whilst you can (and I did when I first saw it as a young teenager) see it as just a gung-ho action movie that's basically content-free. When you then put it into the context of Heinleins original glorification of war and armed service it becomes clear that the film is actually a somewhat clever satire of the original, whilst also being entertaining and action-y enough to satisfy those that prefer not to think too much.
"Just because something can be abused for bad things, doesn't mean everyone involved in its creation are responsible for those bad things."
Hi, sorry if I gave the impression that I think either the product or the developers are in and of themselves evil. I think it's fantastic that this tech exists from a freedom point of view and from a crypto-geek point of view. I support people's rights to create and use software such as this, if they want to.
I'm just saying that I couldn't take part in good conscience.
So what?
I'm not advocating stopping the "free internet", I'm just saying I'm not going to use my resources to help you do something I find abhorrent.
As I said in another post - I'll certainly argue for your right to free speech, but that doesn't mean I'm going to hold your megaphone whilst you go on a violent, racist rant.
Similarly, I'll support the creation and defend the right to use programs such as these, but I'm damned if you'll use my computer to propagate CP.
False analogy. I am not directly, as a private citizen, taking any action there.
"It is a "your with us" or "your against us" answer here. You CANNOT EVER apply your content filtering to data flowing through your node. It violates the very principles by which these networks were created."
Which is why I don't feel I can participate.
There *is* a middle ground in which to operate. It is possible to create a network in which you only connect to known third parties and (unless others have added extra encryption) see what's going across your node without knowing where it originated or what its destination is. That way you keep governments out of your data but don't provide resources for things you find morally abhorrent.
The fact that I believe in free speech is not contradicted by my refusal to propagate arbitrary information. I support your right to say what you want without harassment but I'm sure as hell not going to hold your megaphone whilst you advocate a child abuse/the return of slavery etc.
There is, unfortunately, a nugget of truth in there somewhere.
None of these sorts of things, AFAICT, let you monitor what's going through your node. And that's important to me. Whilst I support free speech and the rights of people to communicate without government interference, I'm damned if my resources are going to be used to propagate child pr0n.
I was with you until you said most people were date rapists and wife beaters.
If you had said drug users, speed-limit breakers, occasional drunk drivers, any of a variety of "social" crimes, fairly small (though drunk driving is quite a big thing) crimes that people do often without thinking.
Date rape and wife beating are not in the same category. If you think they're normal then you have problems.
Genuine question from someone wanting an iPod alternative - Which ones are fine and work well?
I'm looking for something that has over 32GB of flash (add-on SD cards are acceptable) and is small. Xen X-fi is the nearest I've got, but apparently it treats music on the SD card as a second-class citizen and doesn't offer the same functions on it as it will for the internal flash.
It does seem an odd one.
There is a unit at Southampton ECS that investigates a lot of these things. When I was there they were interested in gait recognition, though from the people linked from the page there it seems like this is more in the realm of the electronics side than the computer vision side.
Even TFS gives a use for it - verify that the person on the other end of the phone is who they say they are. Though I'd be surprised if standard phones would give enough resolution to be able to accurately gauge the biometric. If it even is a useful or reliable biometric.
"You have to look at the investing in the market long term. Sure, there are fluctuations, and corrections. But over the long haul...so far, it makes money. Sure, if it drops 50% right now...there are some losses, but, it will go back up."
And that would be fine if you had a long term choice of when to retire.
I'd say yes, you're hopelessly optimistic.
My cynicism went the other way.
"What are they advertising?" was my first thought, then after I realised it was an experiment I moved on to "sooner or later someone will pervert this for advertising"
Then scrap the damn bureacracy. When the public demand change in huge numbers then they should damn well get it fast.
That said, I never did believe that Obama would change anything much. Hoped, a little. Believed, no.
Once again, you're not who I was aiming the snark at.
If you have software that can't be moved, fine, no problem. It's the usual, somewhat trollish, "lunix teh suxx0r!" crowd I was aiming at, for whom PS is the fashionable excuse to avoid thinking too hard.
"It was probably creating a system restore point,"
No, it wasn't.
It tells you when it does that. Most of the time it just sits there doing fuck-all for a few minutes before it even downloads the updates, and pauses between each, and downloads them at a snail's pace. And even when it has them, it's three stage "Now I'm installing, now you must reboot so I can do more during shutdown and more again during startup" is painfully slow.
Does debian do an auto system restore? No, if I wanted that I could set it up. In this case windows is being far, far slower even without it, at every stage.
"ONE click, my friend. Or just hit ENTER, I know it entails pulling your hand out of the cheetoz-bag by for christ's, computers are all about sacrifice."
One click to do what?
I'm not talking about the FUCK-DAMNED box to elevate permissions. For the last FUCKING time. I don't care about that box.
Read my comments before replying next time. This is about Vista stopping the running of unsigned binaries at startup, amongst other things.
Oh sure, and I have a feeling that adobe even encouraged this by having a license provision specifically allowing people who use it at work to take it home and install a single instance on a machine there too. Helps keep it in its leadership position.
That said, I don't know many people that actually use it in a professional capacity either, and those that did were working in design/presentation/web stuff.
The platform thing is chicken and egg really. Which comes first, greater OS market share or porting of popular software?
I guess we'll just have to keep watching.
Hey, in that case my snark wasn't aimed at you, I just don't believe that half as many people that use PS as a "why linux sucks" talking point actually have a license.
I'm not saying "OMG vista suxs! Use linux!", I just think that some of the barriers people erect to giving linux a decent try are artificial.
As I said in another post, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sony had b0rked it in some way, but I did try to strip out most of the cruft when I first got the machine.
Define "aren't properly configured"?
If you mean "aren't on the appropriate MS whitelist with no way to override or set up your own whitelist, then sure, it's badly configured. After the first time I should be able to add an exception, even if it requires digging through a few menus. You can't without just disabling UAC.
No, but I'd rather it didn't stop me doing things in situations where I know what I'm doing. It's my computer, not microsoft's.
Sorry, but that prompt is the least of the annoyances. I don't give a crap about that prompt or the user escalation, I care about actually having the ability to control the machine without being overruled with no way to change it short of disabling the whole of the new security subsystem.
Hey, I don't think Vista is "a failure" (except perhaps when compared against expected revenue), or teh w0rst OS evar! or anything like that, it just has some annoying features.
What is it with all the people on this site that jump on me for my legitimate problems with this OS?
I already said I'm surprised that it's the non-geeks that seem to have the worst reaction to it and I don't think it's all that bad.
"When you run Vista on the hardware that it was designed for (two cores and two gigs of RAM is about the minimum), it's easily the best released Windows yet, and you would be a fool to run XP on such a machine."
1. Why does it need so much?!?
2. Err, that pretty much describes my laptop. Vista does not behave well and Sony eventually released free XP downgrade disks due to demand. Not that I used them, I don't boot windows often enough for it to be an annoyance.
I disagree that it can be described as "best". I'm not going to label it a "failure", but I have yet to meet anyone IRL, geek or not, that actually wanted vista on their machine or had a good word to say about it.
Further proof that wearing a tie restricts blood flow to the brain!
Which windows applications do you rely on?
Is it that old classic, Photoshop? Can I ask how much you paid for the license?
Same with word?
Oh wait, you probably pirated them.
This is what annoys me about the whole "I can't move, there's no compatibility" crowd, they're usually crowing about software they have no rights to use in the first place.
"But GIMP just isn't the same"
Sure, but at least you're not commiting a crime (or is it a civil offence?) to obtain/use it.
I boot vista when I want to play a game. At that point the boot time is relevant.
There should be a way for me, as administrator and owner, to tell it to allow things to start that aren't signed by MS. It's that simple.
Last time it was 19 updates. Came out somewhere around 32MB. I have a 24Mb connection, it took a long, long time to download them. It then sat and took the rest of the hour applying them, shutting down, applying some more during shutdown, booting and applying more during startup. And then it found more. It's slow and a bit of a shambles.
19 updates totalling around that size on debian linux would take a matter of seconds.
Yes, eventually I found out it could be disabled. I switched it off and some of the annoyances went away. Great, I have to switch off the new security system to get anything much done.
FUD. Right. User experience and me explaining my annoyances, despite already having said I don't think it's awful, just wrong in a few places, that's FUD?
And you've already decided I'm some sort of Linux zealot despite my saying I use vista adequately well for what I need it for and I'm surprised by the hatred it gets from non-technical people.
Fuck off.
Then you're lucky and I'm not. It takes much, much longer than debian on my VAIO. I'm not ruling out that Sony set it up badly, but quick it is not.
You've never tried installing an ext2 filesystem driver then. Every boot I'd get this nice helpful message telling me windows had prevented programs from running at startup, with no visible way to change things.
I never run them automatically. I only boot it about once a month and it never fails to take at least an hour to update. There's even an inexplicable delay of at least a couple of minutes between selecting the updates to apply and it even starting to download them.
As a UNIX weenie, that confuses and annoys me!
Well exactly, which is why I find it so surprising that it's my dad and various non-savvy friends that get most upset with the whole thing.
Vista is slow to boot.
Vista helpfully stops me running programs I want to run at startup.
Vista takes absolutely hours to update itself.
Vista is always telling me no, I don't have permission to do that, or to look there.
Vista is generally annoying.
Vista also has a couple of more geeky irritations to me as a software engineer and a linux user. But still, it runs my games OK and that's all I ask of it these days. I don't hate it, I just don't think it's that good.
That said, you should here the vitriol and emotional reactions that come out of my none-geek family and friends. This vista hatred may have started here with us, but it's been taken to a whole new level by the general computer-using-but-not-understanding public. I don't know if that's a reflection of them buying all the media hype or if it's a genuinbe reaction to the product, but it seems that it's no longer us penguin-loving kernel botherers that are the main source of the anti-MS vitriol.
Citation needed.
Never heard of it here in the UK.