Actually, while I am a serious Microsoft hater, I used to have to develop for and administrate SQL Server, and I actually really enjoyed it. At least back around 2002 (I can't speak to anything more recent) it was a very solid product, and I found it to be much more polished than Oracle or DB/2.
That depends what you mean by "reporters". What about Guido Fawkes? HuffPo? Crooks and Liars? None of these are newspapers and yet they all contain hard hitting journalism and telling the truth to power. They link to newspapers, yes, but this is only a small portion of their source content.
For the sake of argument, what are their non-newspaper sources?
We will all be the less when newspapers are gone, and we have less news sources. But on a day to day basis, the average consumer could do without them. They can get the news from the wire sources directly,...
I suggest you enumerate the sources of reporting that will exist once newspapers are gone. I think that most people who do that go a little pale after doing so.
The thing is, we might not like the format of newspapers, and we might not even care about the reporting that often. But if politicians and corporations don't have the threat of reporters sniffing around, I believe we're really, deeply, sans-lubricant screwed.
As CIO at a radio astronomical observatory with instruments receiving in the 2.3GHz band, I can say that we prohibit WiFi here completely. We went as far as running shielded Cat5e and Cat6, and building the data center into a screened room to reduce the RFI. Ferrite beads on all cabling going into and out of the data center are installed as well.
Wired Ethernet is the only thing working here.
Out of curiosity, would fiber have been easier/cheaper than all that shielded Cat5e/6 cable?
The biggest issue here is that Medical Equipment has to be run through an FDA Validation process. If you make changes to the system, you have to revalidate, and Validation takes months and $100K's. So the vendors leave them as-is.
What's frustrating is that these systems need to be on a LAN, since they need to report their results to other clinical systems. So these small islands need to be linked other islands, and eventually, someone screws up and links an island with an Internet connection . . ..
It sounds like the real WTF is that the FDA hasn't dealt with the hacking issue in its certification requirements.
It seems like the NSA and other intelligence agencies around the world have a real trust problem.
On the one hand, they make some of their living out of breaking codes. And worse, as we saw with the NSA illegal wiretapping, they're not necessarily acting in legal ways or in the interests of the general public.
So for that reason, we citizens have a good reason to distrust anything they say, especially large wooden statues of horses.
On the other hand, the NSA et al also have a desire (we believe) to help the businesses in a country be genuinely secure, to avoid the economic disadvantage the country has when criminals or foreign intelligence agencies crack into the businesses' computers. And the NSA et al would know that if the protocol was crackable by themselves, foreign intelligence agencies might not be far behind. So the NSA et al might really be offering a protocol that they can't currently crack in a reasonable amount of time.
So for that reason, it's plausible that the protocol really is quite secure, even from supposedly friendly security agencies.
I'm not sure how the average business is supposed to figure out which of those things is the case. Or is it a moot point, because at the very least, such a protocol is likely to be resilient to criminals, and as the "blessed" protocol, would provide some legal cover in the case of a data breach?
Why? The one year old child has had significantly fewer resources invested in it, than the 1000 year old monastery which had to be built by hand and then maintained for 1000 years.
Any justification I try to make will come across as dogmatic, and it kind of would be unfortunately. The most I can say is, if/when you have kids, there's a decent chance you'll side with me on this one.
Now the situation in Palestine is obviously not identical, but it is similar. While a group of houses is manifestly a civilian setup and thus not a legitimate military target, it changes if those houses are used to house fighters, weapons and launch attacks.
Only passingly similar, I'd say. Killing a one year old kid is a trillion times worse than vaporizing a 1000 year old (or whatever age it was) monastery.
This is not meant as a troll. I'm just trying to broaden the discussion:
If the UK evicted its Muslim immigrants, and gave up trying to occupy Northern Ireland, wouldn't that lower the threat level enough for these measures to be easily repealed?
The point being: maybe if your threat level for terrorism is so high that you feel the urge to be a police state, a country should consider removing the motivations for terrorism.
But what the Government should work on (and it's their job to do so) is making sure there is a single open standard format for the records, so that they can be used and transfered between providers with different systems. Otherwise electronic documents can easily end up worse than paper.
No, I won't virtualize WIN/Outlook. No, I won't run 2 desktops. No, the Exchange server is not going to be replaced with insight or kroupware or any other open source replacement.
As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac. It's nice, but there's no way it's even in the same neighborhood that the ballpark for OS X is in. I'm gonna light a small fire here, but I wish a super talented artist would redesign the widget set for Gnome, it's very very dated as it stands now. KDE is far better looking but even it is getting long in the tooth.
Speaking as a user of KDE 4.2, Gnome, Windows XP, and OS X Leopard, I've come to a conclusion about the widget sets and other GUI theme details:
After 5 minutes using a platform, I don't care about them, as long as they're reasonable. I just want to get my work done. Maybe I'm just saying that because at this point in my life I'm perpetually short on time at both home and work. But...
Any non-ugly background image is fine, as long as it doesn't make it hard to see desktop icons or other windows.
Any icon set is fine as long as the icons' purposes are clear, or I can figure out their meaning quickly.
I figured this was a lesson that we as a community learned after Compiz/Fusion get fairly mature. Eye candy is cute, but ultimately its only real benefit is for getting otherwise uninterested people to consider using Linux.
For my day job, I'll take better security, faster booting, easier programability, and broader application support over pretty icons any day of the week.
Slashdot Mirror
And I turned into Whiskeyman. My powers include slurred speech, a drunken lurch, and blackouts.
You're forgetting your most powerful ability: To turn even the ugliest woman into a supermodel!
Actually, while I am a serious Microsoft hater, I used to have to develop for and administrate SQL Server, and I actually really enjoyed it. At least back around 2002 (I can't speak to anything more recent) it was a very solid product, and I found it to be much more polished than Oracle or DB/2.
This book sounds like a way better option than the book I bought last week, "The Hentai Guide to Microsoft SQL Server."
Agreed. Someone who wanks armchairs is a good source of advice.
That depends what you mean by "reporters". What about Guido Fawkes? HuffPo? Crooks and Liars? None of these are newspapers and yet they all contain hard hitting journalism and telling the truth to power. They link to newspapers, yes, but this is only a small portion of their source content.
For the sake of argument, what are their non-newspaper sources?
I suggest you enumerate the sources of reporting that will exist once newspapers are gone. I think that most people who do that go a little pale after doing so.
The thing is, we might not like the format of newspapers, and we might not even care about the reporting that often. But if politicians and corporations don't have the threat of reporters sniffing around, I believe we're really, deeply, sans-lubricant screwed.
e-Reader: $300
Newspaper: 50 cents.
I know which one I'm more likely to buy...
According to current trends: neither.
Well, I've heard you can install Linux on a dead deer.
'There's definitely a right-sizing going on,' says Michael King, research director, mobile and wireless, for Gartner.
Unfortunately, his idiotic terminology renders his words inaudible to me. :-/
What do you mean, "unfortunately"?
RFI.
As CIO at a radio astronomical observatory with instruments receiving in the 2.3GHz band, I can say that we prohibit WiFi here completely. We went as far as running shielded Cat5e and Cat6, and building the data center into a screened room to reduce the RFI. Ferrite beads on all cabling going into and out of the data center are installed as well.
Wired Ethernet is the only thing working here.
Out of curiosity, would fiber have been easier/cheaper than all that shielded Cat5e/6 cable?
Ubuntu 9.10 is currently slated to be released six days later.
Could it possibly be worth advancing Ubuntu's release date by about 10 days, just to steel Microsoft's thunder?
The biggest issue here is that Medical Equipment has to be run through an FDA Validation process. If you make changes to the system, you have to revalidate, and Validation takes months and $100K's. So the vendors leave them as-is.
What's frustrating is that these systems need to be on a LAN, since they need to report their results to other clinical systems. So these small islands need to be linked other islands, and eventually, someone screws up and links an island with an Internet connection . . . .
It sounds like the real WTF is that the FDA hasn't dealt with the hacking issue in its certification requirements.
It seems like the NSA and other intelligence agencies around the world have a real trust problem.
On the one hand, they make some of their living out of breaking codes. And worse, as we saw with the NSA illegal wiretapping, they're not necessarily acting in legal ways or in the interests of the general public.
So for that reason, we citizens have a good reason to distrust anything they say, especially large wooden statues of horses.
On the other hand, the NSA et al also have a desire (we believe) to help the businesses in a country be genuinely secure, to avoid the economic disadvantage the country has when criminals or foreign intelligence agencies crack into the businesses' computers. And the NSA et al would know that if the protocol was crackable by themselves, foreign intelligence agencies might not be far behind. So the NSA et al might really be offering a protocol that they can't currently crack in a reasonable amount of time.
So for that reason, it's plausible that the protocol really is quite secure, even from supposedly friendly security agencies.
I'm not sure how the average business is supposed to figure out which of those things is the case. Or is it a moot point, because at the very least, such a protocol is likely to be resilient to criminals, and as the "blessed" protocol, would provide some legal cover in the case of a data breach?
Any justification I try to make will come across as dogmatic, and it kind of would be unfortunately. The most I can say is, if/when you have kids, there's a decent chance you'll side with me on this one.
Only passingly similar, I'd say. Killing a one year old kid is a trillion times worse than vaporizing a 1000 year old (or whatever age it was) monastery.
Is this really the time for Bush quotes?
So thank them.
But then it wouldn't be thankless. Are you trying to put the poor sap into a race condition???
Are you saying that all religious persons are as stupid as you've indicated New Labor is? I don't see how that holds up.
First, there are these people, who I think pretty clearly weren't stupid:
Or perhaps you consider religion to have been tenable in pre-Darwinian days, but not now? Then you'd have to account for these people:
Do you really hold that all of those people are incredibly stupid, as evidenced by their holding religious beliefs?
I imagine the only way to end up with some privacy is to buy your MP's or PM's browsing history, and have The Daily Mail run it on page 1.
This is not meant as a troll. I'm just trying to broaden the discussion:
If the UK evicted its Muslim immigrants, and gave up trying to occupy Northern Ireland, wouldn't that lower the threat level enough for these measures to be easily repealed?
The point being: maybe if your threat level for terrorism is so high that you feel the urge to be a police state, a country should consider removing the motivations for terrorism.
Amen.
But what the Government should work on (and it's their job to do so) is making sure there is a single open standard format for the records, so that they can be used and transfered between providers with different systems. Otherwise electronic documents can easily end up worse than paper.
Agreed. Definitely a job for ISO!
Man, that's just not fair. It was hard enough when my beagle only lived for 12 years. Now my wife will never want a pet Rydberg!
Have you tried 9.04's experimental support for Exchange's MAPI protocol in the Evolution email client? It's not perfect yet, but if it works for you, you might be able to ditch Windows.
from Lifehacker
As for being as slick as OS X, well, spoken like somebody who obviously doesn't own a Mac. It's nice, but there's no way it's even in the same neighborhood that the ballpark for OS X is in. I'm gonna light a small fire here, but I wish a super talented artist would redesign the widget set for Gnome, it's very very dated as it stands now. KDE is far better looking but even it is getting long in the tooth.
Speaking as a user of KDE 4.2, Gnome, Windows XP, and OS X Leopard, I've come to a conclusion about the widget sets and other GUI theme details:
After 5 minutes using a platform, I don't care about them, as long as they're reasonable. I just want to get my work done. Maybe I'm just saying that because at this point in my life I'm perpetually short on time at both home and work. But...
Any non-ugly background image is fine, as long as it doesn't make it hard to see desktop icons or other windows.
Any icon set is fine as long as the icons' purposes are clear, or I can figure out their meaning quickly.
I figured this was a lesson that we as a community learned after Compiz/Fusion get fairly mature. Eye candy is cute, but ultimately its only real benefit is for getting otherwise uninterested people to consider using Linux.
For my day job, I'll take better security, faster booting, easier programability, and broader application support over pretty icons any day of the week.