The toolbar's installer clearly states that it has to "phone home" to use the advanced features, and you're perfectly free to delete that cookie whenever you feel like it. You have to explicitely turn on those features, which most users don't do. Hardly "tricking" their users a la Gator.
These are the same people who see an ad on TV and think:
1) Wow, it's a $999999 value, but they're giving it to me for 3 easy payments of $29.95!
2) If I call in the next 53 seconds, I get two more free, AND a handy carrying case! I never see deals like this in Wal-Mart!
3) You know, I don't really need any more home cleaning products, but this is just too good of an offer to refuse... where's my credit card?
Gator offers minor services, and people don't associate them with the fact that half their programs stop working and their system slows to a crawl. It's just like the commercial. You're getting ripped off, but you're being told otherwise, and you believe it because you want to believe it.
I've heard about the GTK+ look and feel, and it sounds pretty neat, but I can't figure out how to make programs use it. Is there a standard way to pick a look and feel and make programs (jEdit, specifically) use it?
Wow, good job using anti-terrorist fears to push open source! So what if some software developer has foreign nationals working on their products? Lots of open source projects do too! Let's not also forget that security breaches can come from good old American citizens too. Take your xenophobia somewhere else.
There's a reason why there are DOD and NSA standards for security. They make sure *any* code is audited and checked repeatedly before it can be used in any kind of sensitive context. It doesn't matter if the code was written by George W. Bush himself, although that's a scary thought. It all gets audited.
You know, if they lowered the number of prompts and just assumed safe defaults, the Slashdot crowd would bitch about how they're taking the decisions away from the user and claim that it's a conspiracy so MS can control more of the computer. If they have a lot of warning boxes, people bitch about having to *actually read* the boxes, and intelligently choose an option.
Don't blame Microsoft because the users are too lazy to make decisions. They're hardly the only company that does this. Anybody who just clicks "OK" to anything because they don't feel like reading a 5 line message box deserves what they get.
Problem is that x86's low number of general purpose registers makes it much less efficient. If you've ever progrmamed assembly on a non-x86 CPU, you'd know this. Sparc did this right, and they have the hardware to support it. I don't see why that's a bad thing. You make it sound like x86 having a single-digit number of usable registers is a good thing.
This is all a moot point with modern processors, since register renaming does nearly the exact same thing, just a slightly different implementation. Same thing Sparc has had for year.
Well, XML isn't special in and of itself. It's just a data format. The way MS is using it is pretty damn cool. Instead of defining the GUI programmatically, you can declare it in an XML file. You can position widgets, resize and rotate them (thanks to Avalon), set up event handlers, and much more. You can even embed the code for the event handler in a CDATA section. Or, you can reference a method name in a C# file, and the build system will connect everything together. The benefit for using XML for this is that it's easy to parse, validate, and edit using 3rd party programs. All of MS's tools use this format for UI design too, so you can open up the UI you designed in Visual Studio and edit it yourself too. Glade also uses XML files, but it isn't nearly this slick.
In regards to transparency... yes, it's primarily eye candy. However, for some reason it's *extremely popular* eye candy. I use semitransparent aterms on my box because I like being able to see my background through the window instead of the boring black. My background is dark, and my terminal fonts are light, so it isn't any harder to read. The reason a lot of people want transparency isn't for entire windows, but for smaller things, like menus and popups. If every window was 50% transparent, I'd probably go crazy. I guess it's a personal preference thing. Some people want a lot of eye candy, you obviously don't.
By the way, the X.org server doesn't do transparency. X.org is just a fork of XFree86 somewhere around version 4.3.99. Freedesktop.org's Xserver does, but only on framebuffer drivers, and FD.o doesn't have drivers for *anything* yet. X.org won't have transparency unless they do a big rewrite and completely change the way windows are drawn. Current transparency hacks work by grabbing an image of your desktop, blending it a bit, then putting it as the background of the window. There's no easy (or moderately difficult even) way to have true transparency on XFree86 or X.org.
In Wisconsin we have points, and I was in a similar situation. I got a 72-in-a-55 on an empty country road which was worth 6 points (3 for speeding, x2 because I was 17). If I'd have done that again, I would've lost my license until I turned 21.
That law sounds remarkably stupid. Why not just have a 3 second period where *both* lights are red. That way, you don't have to make green mean "Go, unless the light just turned 3 or less seconds ago."
So they will slam on the breaks and try to stop for the light. Wham, they get rear-ended by another speeder who had even less time to react. If you're speeding and you suddenly see a red light, you have a choice between a side-impact or rear-impact collisions. Hope you have insurance.
Winter driving is horrible. I'm not sure where you live, but in my hometown I drove 20 miles to school every morning, and I was lucky if I could go 25mph in most parts. Anybody who speeds during those kind of conditions are trying to prove Darwin right.
On a lot of US Interstates, that's exactly what happens. One slow lane, one fast lane, and one "suicide" lane. On two-lane highways, the "suicide" drivers just bunch up in the fast lane behind someone who's "only" going 20mph over the limit.
As another poster noted, crashes kill, not speeding. From what I've seen of drivers, this will *increase* crashes. People will speed, and slam on their brakes near the light to try to stop in time. They'll get rear-ended, and innocent people will be injured or killed. I agree that people need to slow down a little and drive more carefully, but the enforcement should *not* kill more people than the activity.
The process I went through to get my Wisconsin license was very similar to what you described. Theory test to get a temporary permit, which lets you drive with an parent or driving instructor, followed by on-the-road lessons with an instructor for roughly 3 months. After that you go to the DMV and perform a road test, which usually includes a decent variety of driving conditions. I don't know how they score the road test. We don't have the computer part on the official test yet, but my high school driver's education class did something similar.
We do have penalty points, though. If you get 12 points before you turn a certain age (I think 21), your license is suspended. Points are doubled for those under 18. I got a speeding ticket, which is normally 3 points, but was 6 because I was only 17. If I had gotten another (Thank you, Mr. State Trooper!), I would've lost my license and had to take a harder test, or possibly lost it completey until I turned 21.
I don't think that the account of your post's parent could've happened in Wisconsin. However, the standards for licensing are completely state-controlled, so other states may have completely different standards.
It might make them feel safe, but a large amount of people getting rear-ended because they tried to make a quickly-changing light will say otherwise. If that happens on a busy day, it will be a messy reminder why we have yellow, THEN red.
Good for your daughter. She sounds like a model human being. Unfortunately, most people (kids and adults alike) aren't. What is your daughter going to do when she eventually does hear other kids swear, or make dirty jokes? Are you willing to restrict her exposure to the world for the rest of her life so she never gets exposed to all that "nasty stuff"?
Also, please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say that kids should learn all those negative habits. I said that during life, they *will* face them, and they won't learn how to deal with them by having mature, intelligent conversations with adults. In a perfect world, you'd be absolutely right. Kids would be civilized, and they would interact positively with everyone. Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect. It's filled with people who'd rather put you down, call you names, and degrade you so they feel better. Those people will exist regardless of how many kids are homeschooled, and you can't hide your children from them forever.
You're defining social skills very narrowly, to be only positive interaction. However, to be able to function in the world, you need to know how to deal with all sorts of people, from the mature, intelligent people to the rude, obnoxious jerks. I'm definately not saying that your daughter should learn how to tease other kids, or tell "bathroom jokes" to the other kids. I am saying that unless she understands why people tease and knows how to deal with it, she *does not* have the necessary social skills for life.
As a side note, have you ever studied any kind of child psychology? The behavioral learning of children isn't as clear-cut as you make it out to be. Children are developing minds right into their teens, and they *do not* have the same complex thought processes as we do, especially for social situations.
Care to elaborate on that? Most linux DEs don't fully support even one of the things on that list, by my count. Show me a way to write GUIs in XML with code embedded, or a way to get *real* transparency in KDE.
MFC DLLs are doing the proper thing. When you break binary compatibility, make a new DLL. Unfortunately, a lot of developers are braindead, and think it's a great idea to have 4 incompatible versions called foo.dll
Never said Konqueror was a part of GNU/Linux. I actually carefully worded that sentence to avoid that impression. *Sigh*
My point wasn't against the security of Linux or KDE, but against the hypocrisy of claiming that IE should be unbundled because integration == bad security. I'm not talking about the kernel or CLI or anything like that, I'm talking about the desktop environment. Windows provides one, and so does KDE. The fact that you could use Gnome or Xfce isn't relevant, because they don't have the same kind of integration.
If you don't install Konqueror/KHTML when you install KDE, your help system is screwed, as are any apps that embed a KHTML component. In that respect, IE/mshtml and Konq/khtml are comparable.
{Mozilla, Opera, Lynx} doesn't support CHMs or the ITS protocol. You're right though, they could support interchangeable interfaces so you could use Gecko to render the help files. I certainly hope this will happen, but I don't think it's likely unless some government lawyer grows a pair and forces them to.
If they "unbundled" IE, they would still ship it with every boxed copy of Windows, and if you wanted Help out of the box, you'd need to install IE. The only way you'd be able to get a completely IE-free system would be from an OEM or a customized install disc.
Speaking with adults when you're a kid and speaking with other kids is a completely different concept. When I was a few years younger, I had no problems talking to adults, but I was horrible at talking to kids. When you're talking on the playground, the other kids don't care whether you're articulate, mature, or intellectually advanced. In fact, if you try to make a mature, well thought out argument with most of the other kids, they'll think you're some kind of loony. My point in all of this is that kids *do* need to interact with large numbers of people their age in order to develop full social skills. Socializing with parents alone won't cut it.
It doesn't work, as mentioned above, because Explorer won't run two copies of itself with different profiles. Explorer's always running, so you have to completely kill it and start another copy using RunAs.
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The toolbar's installer clearly states that it has to "phone home" to use the advanced features, and you're perfectly free to delete that cookie whenever you feel like it. You have to explicitely turn on those features, which most users don't do. Hardly "tricking" their users a la Gator.
These are the same people who see an ad on TV and think:
1) Wow, it's a $999999 value, but they're giving it to me for 3 easy payments of $29.95!
2) If I call in the next 53 seconds, I get two more free, AND a handy carrying case! I never see deals like this in Wal-Mart!
3) You know, I don't really need any more home cleaning products, but this is just too good of an offer to refuse... where's my credit card?
Gator offers minor services, and people don't associate them with the fact that half their programs stop working and their system slows to a crawl. It's just like the commercial. You're getting ripped off, but you're being told otherwise, and you believe it because you want to believe it.
Tarball: 510,000
"Zip file": 2,290,000
Zip users aren't as likely to use the "shovewordstogether" compression scheme :P
I've heard about the GTK+ look and feel, and it sounds pretty neat, but I can't figure out how to make programs use it. Is there a standard way to pick a look and feel and make programs (jEdit, specifically) use it?
Wow, good job using anti-terrorist fears to push open source! So what if some software developer has foreign nationals working on their products? Lots of open source projects do too! Let's not also forget that security breaches can come from good old American citizens too. Take your xenophobia somewhere else.
There's a reason why there are DOD and NSA standards for security. They make sure *any* code is audited and checked repeatedly before it can be used in any kind of sensitive context. It doesn't matter if the code was written by George W. Bush himself, although that's a scary thought. It all gets audited.
You know, if they lowered the number of prompts and just assumed safe defaults, the Slashdot crowd would bitch about how they're taking the decisions away from the user and claim that it's a conspiracy so MS can control more of the computer. If they have a lot of warning boxes, people bitch about having to *actually read* the boxes, and intelligently choose an option.
Don't blame Microsoft because the users are too lazy to make decisions. They're hardly the only company that does this. Anybody who just clicks "OK" to anything because they don't feel like reading a 5 line message box deserves what they get.
How many H1-Bs can you fit in a rackmount server?
Problem is that x86's low number of general purpose registers makes it much less efficient. If you've ever progrmamed assembly on a non-x86 CPU, you'd know this. Sparc did this right, and they have the hardware to support it. I don't see why that's a bad thing. You make it sound like x86 having a single-digit number of usable registers is a good thing. This is all a moot point with modern processors, since register renaming does nearly the exact same thing, just a slightly different implementation. Same thing Sparc has had for year.
Well, XML isn't special in and of itself. It's just a data format. The way MS is using it is pretty damn cool. Instead of defining the GUI programmatically, you can declare it in an XML file. You can position widgets, resize and rotate them (thanks to Avalon), set up event handlers, and much more. You can even embed the code for the event handler in a CDATA section. Or, you can reference a method name in a C# file, and the build system will connect everything together. The benefit for using XML for this is that it's easy to parse, validate, and edit using 3rd party programs. All of MS's tools use this format for UI design too, so you can open up the UI you designed in Visual Studio and edit it yourself too. Glade also uses XML files, but it isn't nearly this slick.
In regards to transparency... yes, it's primarily eye candy. However, for some reason it's *extremely popular* eye candy. I use semitransparent aterms on my box because I like being able to see my background through the window instead of the boring black. My background is dark, and my terminal fonts are light, so it isn't any harder to read. The reason a lot of people want transparency isn't for entire windows, but for smaller things, like menus and popups. If every window was 50% transparent, I'd probably go crazy. I guess it's a personal preference thing. Some people want a lot of eye candy, you obviously don't.
By the way, the X.org server doesn't do transparency. X.org is just a fork of XFree86 somewhere around version 4.3.99. Freedesktop.org's Xserver does, but only on framebuffer drivers, and FD.o doesn't have drivers for *anything* yet. X.org won't have transparency unless they do a big rewrite and completely change the way windows are drawn. Current transparency hacks work by grabbing an image of your desktop, blending it a bit, then putting it as the background of the window. There's no easy (or moderately difficult even) way to have true transparency on XFree86 or X.org.
In Wisconsin we have points, and I was in a similar situation. I got a 72-in-a-55 on an empty country road which was worth 6 points (3 for speeding, x2 because I was 17). If I'd have done that again, I would've lost my license until I turned 21.
That law sounds remarkably stupid. Why not just have a 3 second period where *both* lights are red. That way, you don't have to make green mean "Go, unless the light just turned 3 or less seconds ago."
So they will slam on the breaks and try to stop for the light. Wham, they get rear-ended by another speeder who had even less time to react. If you're speeding and you suddenly see a red light, you have a choice between a side-impact or rear-impact collisions. Hope you have insurance.
Winter driving is horrible. I'm not sure where you live, but in my hometown I drove 20 miles to school every morning, and I was lucky if I could go 25mph in most parts. Anybody who speeds during those kind of conditions are trying to prove Darwin right.
On a lot of US Interstates, that's exactly what happens. One slow lane, one fast lane, and one "suicide" lane. On two-lane highways, the "suicide" drivers just bunch up in the fast lane behind someone who's "only" going 20mph over the limit.
As another poster noted, crashes kill, not speeding. From what I've seen of drivers, this will *increase* crashes. People will speed, and slam on their brakes near the light to try to stop in time. They'll get rear-ended, and innocent people will be injured or killed. I agree that people need to slow down a little and drive more carefully, but the enforcement should *not* kill more people than the activity.
The process I went through to get my Wisconsin license was very similar to what you described. Theory test to get a temporary permit, which lets you drive with an parent or driving instructor, followed by on-the-road lessons with an instructor for roughly 3 months. After that you go to the DMV and perform a road test, which usually includes a decent variety of driving conditions. I don't know how they score the road test. We don't have the computer part on the official test yet, but my high school driver's education class did something similar.
We do have penalty points, though. If you get 12 points before you turn a certain age (I think 21), your license is suspended. Points are doubled for those under 18. I got a speeding ticket, which is normally 3 points, but was 6 because I was only 17. If I had gotten another (Thank you, Mr. State Trooper!), I would've lost my license and had to take a harder test, or possibly lost it completey until I turned 21.
I don't think that the account of your post's parent could've happened in Wisconsin. However, the standards for licensing are completely state-controlled, so other states may have completely different standards.
It might make them feel safe, but a large amount of people getting rear-ended because they tried to make a quickly-changing light will say otherwise. If that happens on a busy day, it will be a messy reminder why we have yellow, THEN red.
Good for your daughter. She sounds like a model human being. Unfortunately, most people (kids and adults alike) aren't. What is your daughter going to do when she eventually does hear other kids swear, or make dirty jokes? Are you willing to restrict her exposure to the world for the rest of her life so she never gets exposed to all that "nasty stuff"?
Also, please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't say that kids should learn all those negative habits. I said that during life, they *will* face them, and they won't learn how to deal with them by having mature, intelligent conversations with adults. In a perfect world, you'd be absolutely right. Kids would be civilized, and they would interact positively with everyone. Unfortunately, the world isn't perfect. It's filled with people who'd rather put you down, call you names, and degrade you so they feel better. Those people will exist regardless of how many kids are homeschooled, and you can't hide your children from them forever.
You're defining social skills very narrowly, to be only positive interaction. However, to be able to function in the world, you need to know how to deal with all sorts of people, from the mature, intelligent people to the rude, obnoxious jerks. I'm definately not saying that your daughter should learn how to tease other kids, or tell "bathroom jokes" to the other kids. I am saying that unless she understands why people tease and knows how to deal with it, she *does not* have the necessary social skills for life.
As a side note, have you ever studied any kind of child psychology? The behavioral learning of children isn't as clear-cut as you make it out to be. Children are developing minds right into their teens, and they *do not* have the same complex thought processes as we do, especially for social situations.
Care to elaborate on that? Most linux DEs don't fully support even one of the things on that list, by my count. Show me a way to write GUIs in XML with code embedded, or a way to get *real* transparency in KDE.
MFC DLLs are doing the proper thing. When you break binary compatibility, make a new DLL. Unfortunately, a lot of developers are braindead, and think it's a great idea to have 4 incompatible versions called foo.dll
Never said Konqueror was a part of GNU/Linux. I actually carefully worded that sentence to avoid that impression. *Sigh*
My point wasn't against the security of Linux or KDE, but against the hypocrisy of claiming that IE should be unbundled because integration == bad security. I'm not talking about the kernel or CLI or anything like that, I'm talking about the desktop environment. Windows provides one, and so does KDE. The fact that you could use Gnome or Xfce isn't relevant, because they don't have the same kind of integration.
If you don't install Konqueror/KHTML when you install KDE, your help system is screwed, as are any apps that embed a KHTML component. In that respect, IE/mshtml and Konq/khtml are comparable.
{Mozilla, Opera, Lynx} doesn't support CHMs or the ITS protocol. You're right though, they could support interchangeable interfaces so you could use Gecko to render the help files. I certainly hope this will happen, but I don't think it's likely unless some government lawyer grows a pair and forces them to.
If they "unbundled" IE, they would still ship it with every boxed copy of Windows, and if you wanted Help out of the box, you'd need to install IE. The only way you'd be able to get a completely IE-free system would be from an OEM or a customized install disc.
Speaking with adults when you're a kid and speaking with other kids is a completely different concept. When I was a few years younger, I had no problems talking to adults, but I was horrible at talking to kids. When you're talking on the playground, the other kids don't care whether you're articulate, mature, or intellectually advanced. In fact, if you try to make a mature, well thought out argument with most of the other kids, they'll think you're some kind of loony. My point in all of this is that kids *do* need to interact with large numbers of people their age in order to develop full social skills. Socializing with parents alone won't cut it.
It's worth to mention that this will disable lots of functionality of the Help system, so if you actually use Help, don't do this patch!
It doesn't work, as mentioned above, because Explorer won't run two copies of itself with different profiles. Explorer's always running, so you have to completely kill it and start another copy using RunAs.