I do not believe the diversity in species we have today could have come about by random chance and changes in the world over billions of years.
First, that's not exactly what Evolution says. There is nothing "random" about natural selection. The mutations may be random, but the result is very predictable -- and this concept is repeated in other kinds of science. Take quantum theory -- according to that, the universe operates on random probabilities. We don't know exactly where an electron is now, or where it will be later -- it moves randomly, within a field of probability. According to quantum theory, as I understand it, it's entirely possible that all of the atoms in your body could teleport to the other side of the world, right now. It's just ridiculously improbable.
So, Evolution is like that -- given the environment of the world, and what is known about a species at a certain time, certain characteristics probably will develop. Sure, it's possible we could have evolved with three noses, but it's incredibly unlikely.
But more importantly, why do you find that concept so difficult to believe? Why couldn't it have been random?
One more question for you: What is it about Evolution that is incompatible with your faith? Why must God have created the world in six days, instead of intervening with Evolution over millions of years -- or simply setting off the Big Bang just right, knowing that we would be created as we are?
If you have friends who believe in Creationism, respect them
See, that's going to be a bit of a problem...
and provide for them sound arguments against it.
That I can do.
I can respect people who do very stupid things, but that does not mean I respect the stupid things people think or do. I respect your right to believe whatever you want to believe, but I don't respect your invisible sky-god. And if you honestly believe the world was created in six days some six thousand years ago, there had better be something else about you that is damned impressive if you want my respect.
I am willing to discuss these things sanely, civilly, even non-confrontationally, but I do still find creationism to be laughable.
I had a 17" Powerbook, and I have to say, at that size, anything other than widescreen simply isn't going to fly. I can always find things to do with the space -- throw a dock on one side of the screen, open four Terminal windows and have room to spare -- but widescreen, it actually folds up nice and slim, fits in a backpack.
Can you imagine the same thing non-widescreen? Assuming I could even carry it anywhere, I'd be terrified of opening it -- that much more distance from the hinge to the outer edge means that much more leverage exerted on the hinge -- that much easier to break.
I find it odd you didn't mention OpenOffice, Google Docs, KOffice, iWork, etc. Most would at least mention OpenOffice sarcastically, as another "option" that couldn't possibly work, but you didn't mention it at all.
...meaning actual internet-related criminality, like Kraken.
Kraken being a worm?
In other words, you've given up free speech in order to be slightly safer from... malware. Something you could take care of easily, on the target computer, with reasonable security measures.
Actually, that was my first thought when I saw the MacBook Air: "Can I put Linux on this thing and still use the multitouch?"
If I could be assured of that, I might buy one and dual-boot, probably stay in Linux most of the time. The Air is everything I want in a laptop except price, and that should come down by the time I can know all hardware will work.
I know that I can code, break, and code for some 18-20 hours, with very long breaks -- some to think about the project, and plan it out, and some to get my mind off the project entirely. But by then, the quality really does suffer, no matter how carefully I plan -- lack of sleep eventually makes me completely ineffective at anything, including coding.
I could probably do it with polyphasic sleep, but I'm not sure I have enough time to get on a polyphasic schedule before the contest.
Having had the opportunity to learn Chinese, I know that the underlying principle of The Great Firewall is to protect Chinese people from being taken advantage of by Westerners.
That may be the common view over there. It may even be believed by most of the government. But having had the opportunity to learn George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seems much more likely that it is part of a Chinese propaganda machine -- that at least a few people on the top have set it up to prevent dangerous ideas from reaching the Chinese people.
Westerners can be unconscious of what they are doing in the context of other methods of thought, no matter how hard they try to be nice.
So if I understand this right, you're claiming that the purpose of the Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from being shocked or offended by Westerners?
If that really was the case, it would be simpler and cheaper to distribute software filters to each computer, and have them be opt-out. There is no need to force that protection onto people.
American late night talk show host Jay Leno (on NBC) often pokes fun at British people with accusations of weakness; as a fan of European soccer and of rugby, I know this to be ridiculous
First, he's a comedian. He often pokes fun at all kinds of people, and says all kinds of baseless things -- not because they are true, or even kind, but because they are funny.
And second, this is a great example of what life would be like without the Great Firewall -- Brits must, indeed, hear these comments with disbelief, but they can always choose to turn Leno off. Because anyone can say anything, there is always something else to watch -- you can always find the people who agree with you. They can even call Leno up to complain.
But that's the point -- they have a choice. Maybe some of them can laugh at themselves enough to find it funny. (I don't know, haven't seen these particular Leno jokes.)
Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.
I know well, people are sincere about (obviously pertinent) complaints about the government and one keeps looking for traces of literacy in all this illiterate reasoning.
I'll be the first to admit, I don't actually know what is going on in China. I don't know the language -- any of them. So if I've gotten something wrong, feel free to correct me.
But I don't feel that it matters why they think they are doing this. Does it matter why a murderer kills? It may be an interesting psychological study, but it is simpler to agree that murder is wrong, and whatever his reasons for doing it, he must be stopped. That is why I don't feel I need to understand the rationale behind the Golden Shield Project -- I believe that forced censorship is wrong, and must be stopped, no matter what its intention.
an abundance of buxom adolescent schoolgirl characters flashing panties at every turn.
As another poster said, that's pretty absurd -- pedophiles would be into smaller breasts, don't you think? And I don't consider high school to be pedophilia -- statutory rape, maybe, but these girls you're talking about are physically mature.
If that serves any purpose other than to fulfill the fantasies of pedophiles, I am at a loss to explain it.... does not preclude it from being a valid form of art.
Again, make up your mind. Either it serves no other purpose, or it can also be art. And yes, sometimes panty flashing is exactly what the art needs at that moment -- take Evangeleon.
In context, it is perfectly clear what Miyazaki is doing.
Care to explain it?
I can see it in Nausicaa. I can almost see it in Princess Mononoke. I really can't see it in Spirited Away.
I think you forgot the ??? before step 1. How did you get access to my machine?
Also: By the time you have the ability to install a CA Certificate on my machine -- which requires root access, by the way -- you have already completely pwned me. At this point, anti-phishing in the browser is just going to slow you down -- what's to stop you from silently disabling the anti-phishing capability?
For those of us who do know how to read a URL -- both the domain name and the https part -- anti-phishing protection is pretty much completely superfluous. If Paypal is seriously going to implement pro-anti-phishing measures, it's as likely that I'll be running a proxy of my own -- right up until I move away from PayPal.
We are talking about a GUI subsystem that can't even fall back to a safe res/refresh when something goes wrong.
Except, apparently Ubuntu Hardy does exactly that.
Its config tools are terrible
You mean xf86config? Those are almost never done directly, and the vast majority of systems boot to a working GUI off the livecd. If a livecd can boot properly, there must be a tool somewhere that's generating a workable conf file, right?
And then there is the putrid audio architecture
I quite like it, actually, but then, I suffered through OSS.
I don't know if ALSA defaults to falling back to software mixing when it runs out of channels. I'm fairly sure it can. But I know I was grateful both to have a sound server (back when I switched from Windows 98, where I could play sound out of exactly one program at once), and then later, I was grateful to not need a sound server (back when doing the mixing in hardware was a significant speed boost).
Actually, a quick Google search confirms it: you can get software mixing in ALSA. I suspect that this will eventually become the default -- and according to this page, it already is, at least for some builds of ALSA. Do you have this problem on Hardy? (A fresh install, so it can properly autodetect?) The thing was less than two weeks from release when you posted, so it would have been fair to test...
Once you've gotten that bad at audio AND visual, then you're pretty much hostile to the end-user. Not focusing on these areas is sheer absurdity
Which is why they are focusing on them, I would think. Hardy apparently has some things to make X easier.
self-regulation can quickly be overhauled if it becomes clear that something isn't working.
We're talking about basic rights. Building blocks. They're not hard to get right.
Let's take your example -- they're mostly harmless, now, and can be worked around. But notice, also, how crippled they always were -- there was a law against working on Sunday, maybe, but there don't seem to be any laws actually requiring that you go to church and pray. And the reason for that is a bill of rights -- specifically, a legal, immutable one.
The baffling thing to me about this whole thing is that Comcast could solve it really easily - just stop advertising "unlimited" bandwidth and publish the monthly transfer quotas.
However, if hard drive manufacturers can now be sued for not advertising the size of the drive in proper gibibytes (rather than purely-metric gigabytes), I would hope that Comcast's customers could solve this fairly easily, too -- sue them for false advertising.
Instead for some bizarre reason Comcast (and most ISPs) seem to think the word "unlimited" is some holy marketing term which Shall Not Be Touched...
I'm actually fine with that, if they were an ISP who was interested in actually responding to demand, rather than trying to quash it.
I'm lucky enough to have such an ISP. Fiber to my house, and it pretty much delivers as advertised. They've expressed a desire to stick with net neutrality, and to avoid throttling -- they claim that if it becomes an issue, they'll adjust their pricing structure, but so long as people are willing to pay for it, they'll keep building more bandwidth at their end.
Are you seriously opposing one monopoly while supporting another?
A government-regulated monopoly is a different animal than merely a government-sanctioned monopoly.
First, to answer your question, yes, because there should be no restriction to what cables go where (provided that those laying the cable have permission of the property owners).
Which means there will be lots of cables -- and it may be difficult to get that permission.
Second, why would the cables have to go to every house? Why couldn't they only go to those who want the service?
It's the houses in between that would be a problem, I would think.
Regardless, I do believe it is a physical monopoly, government-mandated or not. It's a place which inherently has a high barrier of entry. The only real way around that would be to let the cables be owned by the government, and have the ISPs be somewhere further down the line -- but the whole point of an ISP is to cover that last mile. If they don't own the cables, then they're what, just a router?
Increased rights violations are still unjustified.
So you are now arguing for the right of an ISP to do whatever the hell it wants to your packets?
Saying, "hey, we haven't given up enough of our rights, lets give up some more in order to get a solution that we like" is what is being said by supporters of increased regulation, and such a statement is obviously absurd, not only because rights violations are unjustified, but also because as you give up more of your rights now, in the future you're less likely - not more likely - to get results that you prefer.
Very eloquent -- except I still cannot see myself ever wanting or needing to violate basic net neutrality.
Put another way: Assume there is a right to murder people. Your argument still works -- you'd basically be arguing that I shouldn't ever give up my own right to kill innocent people, because that's less likely to get me the result I want.
And yet, we have laws against murder, and I support those.
Your argument about net neutrality makes it even more absurd, because at least with murder, I have a shot -- I can learn kung-fu, I can buy a shotgun, and I can learn to defend myself -- or very effectively kill others. We're mostly on equal footing with murder, for now -- neither of us control armies.
But I can't be an ISP. That's not because of current regulation, that's because it costs money to lay fiber, and I don't have that money. I'm on unequal footing with my ISP already -- they have more power than I do, and they have more money than I do. Increasing both our freedoms will not improve that situation -- that's like giving muskets to the peasants and F16s to the knights. No, really.
Put another way: Bruce Schneier makes a similar case about privacy and transparency. Making everyone more transparent (and thus giving them less privacy) can as easily make things worse for us as better.
Worth mentioning that this menu entry is no longer as useful as it once was, given that Ubuntu now defaults to booting the default entry in three seconds -- which means that you have to know that Grub is there, and that you can hit escape to get that choice.
At which point, I miss Lilo -- where it would boot instantly to the default entry, unless you were holding a key when it loaded.
I realize I'm a little late in the game for this, and I give myself 50/50 odds that I'll actually send it in, but here goes:
I use PayPal right now because it is one of the more secure options out there. I give my financial details to one party (PayPal) instead of every site I do business with -- which means PayPal gives me the opportunity to review every single transaction, and approve or deny.
It's also nice and reassuring to visit www.paypal.com, and see an https URL the whole way through -- knowing nothing important is ever transmitted in the clear.
And for some small amount of money -- I forget exactly how much it is, but relatively cheap -- I can even get a physical security token, which, I believe, is also valid with VeriSign. And due to its implementation, this token requires no additional software -- I just read a number off the token and into a browser window. What's not to like?
These are the reasons a highly technical and security-conscious person might want to use PayPal. Highly secure, with a lot of control and choice.
Now, I can understand wanting to protect the less-technical users. Send them emails every now and then, telling them not to click links in emails. Warn them if they're not using a secure browser. Provide technical support, walkthroughs, and as much hand-holding as you like.
But please don't alienate those of us who know what we are doing by removing our choice. Don't block browsers simply for not supporting anti-phishing, or having it disabled -- some of us know how to read the address bar, and value our privacy. Block older, actually vulnerable browsers if you must, but do not make it a whitelist.
The day I have to turn on user-agent spoofing to get to my money is the day I take my money somewhere else.
Mostly because we expect it from governments and financial institutions. Remember, these are the sites that were required to support two-factor authentication, and instead, they now require you to type some five or so questions and answers about yourself -- you know, the kind that are usually used to help you, should you lose your password -- and require that you type one of those along with your password, and also look at a random "security picture".
Instead of, you know, handing out a physical security token, so it would actually be two-factor authentication. Or refusing to comply with the law, if it's really that expensive. But instead, they faked it halfway.
But every bank does it, so we're kind of jaded about it -- we expect it. Plus, no one of these banks has more people on their website than PayPal, I'd guess -- and eBay is now requiring PayPal. And there are those (like me) who use PayPal for additional security -- when I buy something, I am redirected back to PayPal's website, where I have to approve the purchase (with my PayPal username/password); much more secure than entering a credit card on anything HTTPS. That, and it's a tip jar...
In other words, they are big enough for it to hurt when they lock us out. There's the other thing -- I can just move to another bank if I don't like their website. There's not really much in the way of alternatives to PayPal.
Assuming it's a blacklist, and assuming it's based on actually vulnerable browsers, and not just browsers they don't like, then yes, I agree.
However, mentioning that they want people to use browsers with anti-phishing means they're likely never going to support the browser I use. So I will have to use some "approved" browser, once I've disabled the anti-phishing crap, of course.
In fact, the only way they could know if my browser supports anti-phishing is to use a whitelist, which means they're basically screwing third-party browsers. Which means you're going to improve IE-compliance a little, but I doubt it will do much for standards compliance.
Oh well. I'm going to wait and see. But if I'm nagged about my choice of browsers, I will stop using PayPal.
- A link to download a file should just go to the file, not some clever javascript crap...
Amen!
With one comment -- I don't necessarily mind clever javascript crap that intercepts the onClick handler, because then middle-click-in-a-tab still works, rigth-click-copy-location still works, spidering still works, and browsing without Javascript still works.
But every time I see a link to javascript:void(0); I want to murder someone.
- Quit breaking stuff up into dozens of tiny bite sized pages. My scrollbar works just fine thank you very much, and it lets me scan all of the content in an instant instead of having to click through it all.
I'd actually propose at least the option to see it all at once. The main reason I like this is that quicksearch within my browser can work.
But at the same time, I like the idea of loading stuff on demand. I kind of like clever solutions like some javascript which detects a significant amount of scrolling, and loads some more stuff to the bottom of the page, so you can scroll down forever. But I don't like not being able to search there.
I guess that makes me neutral, but you did hit on one important point:
Yes, I know that some people do this to goose their ad revenue,
If you're going to have an ad to the left, an ad to the right, three ads in the middle, an add at the top, all of them flash except some text ads tucked away at the bottom, then please, for the love of god, put everything on one page. It's not that the ads are annoying, so much as that it's going to take a solid 20-30 seconds to load each page. If it's a 10 page article, we're talking about 5 minutes of pure loading.
- Don't use clever little graphics and pop-ups for every link, text works much better.
Use graceful degradation, at least. That is: Actually use the alt text properly, or load your cute stuff by using javascript to search/replace the normal text.
- I don't need links to "print this page" or "email it to a friend".
I don't mind "print" when it really means "Flatten 10 pages into 1 and take out the 35 flash ads."
But make the page printable in the first place. And "email to a friend" is just retarded -- isn't that abuse waiting to happen?
- You don't need to know what region of the world I'm in before I can download a damned printer driver.
Even worse, you don't need to provide drivers in some part of the world, but not in others. When South Park says "Sorry, England," it's funny, but still obnoxious. (Actually, for me, Cartman said "Get Flash you stupid hippie!") But when my video drivers are available only for Vista in the US, but for XP in the UK, that's where I draw the line.
- Don't use ridiculous URLs that query stuff from a CGI with a zillion arguments just to serve up a static page.
Better, use sane URLs to start with. None of this "permalink" crap -- make the URL a permalink anyway.
I could go on all day... fixing any of those design problems would automatically improve accessibility, not just for blind users but for mobile devices as well.
And for people using alternate browsers/OSes, or people in Lynx for whatever reason. (Say what you will, but when X doesn't start, I appreciate any Lynx support I can get.)
Actually, I will go on all day. Here's some more:
Drop the www from your domain. Replace the whole thing with a permanent redirect to your normal domain. Or the other way, I don't care. But do not force me to type the www, and do not have identical pages both with and without the www.
Don't depend on Flash. Yes, I realize some ludicrously huge percentage of the world has flash, but even if you could assume 100%, there are many reasons not to use it.
The cutesy art is designed to make the women characters seem more childlike and yet is unabashedly sexualizing and fetishizing the pre-pubescent female form.
And I suppose making the guys "cutesy" serves the same purpose? Or, for that matter, the cute children? It's made pretty clear who is what in anime.
Not that this really deserves a response. To even suggest such a thing is some combination paranoia, trolling, and a revelation -- what kind of a sick mind looks at Ghost in the Shell and calls it pedophilia?
Only hardcore fans and toddlers watch the crap now.
I thought it was nothing more than an outlet for pedophiles? Make up your mind -- is it for pedophiles, or for toddlers?
Which is not to say that there isn't good anime out there.
Actually, you said exactly that.
especially the idiotic futurism of Ghibli
WTF? I don't remember Spirited Away having anything to do with the future.
I remember visiting my cousin and watching her subtitled Sailor Moon movie. I noticed two things:
First, it sounds a lot less retarded in Japanese. That's probably partly because I can't understand what they're saying, but probably also because it seems to be the same exact group of voice actors doing every single English dub of Anime. Kind of ruins it for me to have Shinji of Evangeleon sound exactly like Goku of DragonBall Z.
I do feel better about it being a reasonably large company getting the rights, though. When Disney does Studio Ghibli movies, they actually get talented people -- and different people -- to do the voices. (Patrick Stewart was in Nausicaa, I think.)
Second thing: While I had to have this pointed out to me (no way I was going to sit through the movie again), there was a fair amount of censorship just from the subbed version to the dubbed version. I assume they were both US releases... Apparently, two of the older Sailor Scouts are lesbians, and there's no secret made of it in the subbed version -- but dialog like "There are so many fun things to do when you're an adult!" get completely dropped in the dubbed version.
If they can manage to screw up Sailor Moon, imagine what they'd do to things like Ghost in the Shell?
Slashdot Mirror
First, that's not exactly what Evolution says. There is nothing "random" about natural selection. The mutations may be random, but the result is very predictable -- and this concept is repeated in other kinds of science. Take quantum theory -- according to that, the universe operates on random probabilities. We don't know exactly where an electron is now, or where it will be later -- it moves randomly, within a field of probability. According to quantum theory, as I understand it, it's entirely possible that all of the atoms in your body could teleport to the other side of the world, right now. It's just ridiculously improbable.
So, Evolution is like that -- given the environment of the world, and what is known about a species at a certain time, certain characteristics probably will develop. Sure, it's possible we could have evolved with three noses, but it's incredibly unlikely.
But more importantly, why do you find that concept so difficult to believe? Why couldn't it have been random?
One more question for you: What is it about Evolution that is incompatible with your faith? Why must God have created the world in six days, instead of intervening with Evolution over millions of years -- or simply setting off the Big Bang just right, knowing that we would be created as we are?
See, that's going to be a bit of a problem...
That I can do.
I can respect people who do very stupid things, but that does not mean I respect the stupid things people think or do. I respect your right to believe whatever you want to believe, but I don't respect your invisible sky-god. And if you honestly believe the world was created in six days some six thousand years ago, there had better be something else about you that is damned impressive if you want my respect.
I am willing to discuss these things sanely, civilly, even non-confrontationally, but I do still find creationism to be laughable.
I had a 17" Powerbook, and I have to say, at that size, anything other than widescreen simply isn't going to fly. I can always find things to do with the space -- throw a dock on one side of the screen, open four Terminal windows and have room to spare -- but widescreen, it actually folds up nice and slim, fits in a backpack.
Can you imagine the same thing non-widescreen? Assuming I could even carry it anywhere, I'd be terrified of opening it -- that much more distance from the hinge to the outer edge means that much more leverage exerted on the hinge -- that much easier to break.
An "offtopic" mod is not a "not funny" mod.
4/20 may be funny, but I cannot imagine what it has to do with Norway or OOXML.
I find it odd you didn't mention OpenOffice, Google Docs, KOffice, iWork, etc. Most would at least mention OpenOffice sarcastically, as another "option" that couldn't possibly work, but you didn't mention it at all.
Perhaps you don't know that they exist?
As a software developer and Linux geek, I can say that probably everyone on Slashdot can identify in some way or another.
Specifically, reminds me of this shirt -- of course, I fix their computer anyway, but I'm always tempted...
Kraken being a worm?
In other words, you've given up free speech in order to be slightly safer from... malware. Something you could take care of easily, on the target computer, with reasonable security measures.
Or am I missing something again?
So, are you saying that this is designed to prevent you from having to see something criminal a Westerner might have said?
Or is it to prevent a Westerner from giving you criminal ideas?
This is Slashdot. I am allowed to speak about whatever I want.
If you disagree, tell me why, don't just tell me to learn Mandarin.
It appears most of the page is straight HTML, which makes me wonder why they are blocking your entire browser when they detect Flash...
You see, while I don't actually have Flash -- and very little works -- Gnash is enough to fool some sites into thinking I have Flash.
Actually, that was my first thought when I saw the MacBook Air: "Can I put Linux on this thing and still use the multitouch?"
If I could be assured of that, I might buy one and dual-boot, probably stay in Linux most of the time. The Air is everything I want in a laptop except price, and that should come down by the time I can know all hardware will work.
Put everyone in a box. That at least proves that they wrote it themselves.
I'm not sure that's quite what GP meant.
I know that I can code, break, and code for some 18-20 hours, with very long breaks -- some to think about the project, and plan it out, and some to get my mind off the project entirely. But by then, the quality really does suffer, no matter how carefully I plan -- lack of sleep eventually makes me completely ineffective at anything, including coding.
I could probably do it with polyphasic sleep, but I'm not sure I have enough time to get on a polyphasic schedule before the contest.
That may be the common view over there. It may even be believed by most of the government. But having had the opportunity to learn George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seems much more likely that it is part of a Chinese propaganda machine -- that at least a few people on the top have set it up to prevent dangerous ideas from reaching the Chinese people.
So if I understand this right, you're claiming that the purpose of the Great Firewall is to prevent Chinese people from being shocked or offended by Westerners?
If that really was the case, it would be simpler and cheaper to distribute software filters to each computer, and have them be opt-out. There is no need to force that protection onto people.
First, he's a comedian. He often pokes fun at all kinds of people, and says all kinds of baseless things -- not because they are true, or even kind, but because they are funny.
And second, this is a great example of what life would be like without the Great Firewall -- Brits must, indeed, hear these comments with disbelief, but they can always choose to turn Leno off. Because anyone can say anything, there is always something else to watch -- you can always find the people who agree with you. They can even call Leno up to complain.
But that's the point -- they have a choice. Maybe some of them can laugh at themselves enough to find it funny. (I don't know, haven't seen these particular Leno jokes.)
Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can never hurt you.
I'll be the first to admit, I don't actually know what is going on in China. I don't know the language -- any of them. So if I've gotten something wrong, feel free to correct me.
But I don't feel that it matters why they think they are doing this. Does it matter why a murderer kills? It may be an interesting psychological study, but it is simpler to agree that murder is wrong, and whatever his reasons for doing it, he must be stopped. That is why I don't feel I need to understand the rationale behind the Golden Shield Project -- I believe that forced censorship is wrong, and must be stopped, no matter what its intention.
As another poster said, that's pretty absurd -- pedophiles would be into smaller breasts, don't you think? And I don't consider high school to be pedophilia -- statutory rape, maybe, but these girls you're talking about are physically mature.
Again, make up your mind. Either it serves no other purpose, or it can also be art. And yes, sometimes panty flashing is exactly what the art needs at that moment -- take Evangeleon.
Care to explain it?
I can see it in Nausicaa. I can almost see it in Princess Mononoke. I really can't see it in Spirited Away.
I think you forgot the ??? before step 1. How did you get access to my machine?
Also: By the time you have the ability to install a CA Certificate on my machine -- which requires root access, by the way -- you have already completely pwned me. At this point, anti-phishing in the browser is just going to slow you down -- what's to stop you from silently disabling the anti-phishing capability?
For those of us who do know how to read a URL -- both the domain name and the https part -- anti-phishing protection is pretty much completely superfluous. If Paypal is seriously going to implement pro-anti-phishing measures, it's as likely that I'll be running a proxy of my own -- right up until I move away from PayPal.
Except, apparently Ubuntu Hardy does exactly that.
You mean xf86config? Those are almost never done directly, and the vast majority of systems boot to a working GUI off the livecd. If a livecd can boot properly, there must be a tool somewhere that's generating a workable conf file, right?
I quite like it, actually, but then, I suffered through OSS.
I don't know if ALSA defaults to falling back to software mixing when it runs out of channels. I'm fairly sure it can. But I know I was grateful both to have a sound server (back when I switched from Windows 98, where I could play sound out of exactly one program at once), and then later, I was grateful to not need a sound server (back when doing the mixing in hardware was a significant speed boost).
Actually, a quick Google search confirms it: you can get software mixing in ALSA. I suspect that this will eventually become the default -- and according to this page, it already is, at least for some builds of ALSA. Do you have this problem on Hardy? (A fresh install, so it can properly autodetect?) The thing was less than two weeks from release when you posted, so it would have been fair to test...
Which is why they are focusing on them, I would think. Hardy apparently has some things to make X easier.
We're talking about basic rights. Building blocks. They're not hard to get right.
Let's take your example -- they're mostly harmless, now, and can be worked around. But notice, also, how crippled they always were -- there was a law against working on Sunday, maybe, but there don't seem to be any laws actually requiring that you go to church and pray. And the reason for that is a bill of rights -- specifically, a legal, immutable one.
However, if hard drive manufacturers can now be sued for not advertising the size of the drive in proper gibibytes (rather than purely-metric gigabytes), I would hope that Comcast's customers could solve this fairly easily, too -- sue them for false advertising.
I'm actually fine with that, if they were an ISP who was interested in actually responding to demand, rather than trying to quash it.
I'm lucky enough to have such an ISP. Fiber to my house, and it pretty much delivers as advertised. They've expressed a desire to stick with net neutrality, and to avoid throttling -- they claim that if it becomes an issue, they'll adjust their pricing structure, but so long as people are willing to pay for it, they'll keep building more bandwidth at their end.
A government-regulated monopoly is a different animal than merely a government-sanctioned monopoly.
Which means there will be lots of cables -- and it may be difficult to get that permission.
It's the houses in between that would be a problem, I would think.
Regardless, I do believe it is a physical monopoly, government-mandated or not. It's a place which inherently has a high barrier of entry. The only real way around that would be to let the cables be owned by the government, and have the ISPs be somewhere further down the line -- but the whole point of an ISP is to cover that last mile. If they don't own the cables, then they're what, just a router?
So you are now arguing for the right of an ISP to do whatever the hell it wants to your packets?
Very eloquent -- except I still cannot see myself ever wanting or needing to violate basic net neutrality.
Put another way: Assume there is a right to murder people. Your argument still works -- you'd basically be arguing that I shouldn't ever give up my own right to kill innocent people, because that's less likely to get me the result I want.
And yet, we have laws against murder, and I support those.
Your argument about net neutrality makes it even more absurd, because at least with murder, I have a shot -- I can learn kung-fu, I can buy a shotgun, and I can learn to defend myself -- or very effectively kill others. We're mostly on equal footing with murder, for now -- neither of us control armies.
But I can't be an ISP. That's not because of current regulation, that's because it costs money to lay fiber, and I don't have that money. I'm on unequal footing with my ISP already -- they have more power than I do, and they have more money than I do. Increasing both our freedoms will not improve that situation -- that's like giving muskets to the peasants and F16s to the knights. No, really.
Put another way: Bruce Schneier makes a similar case about privacy and transparency. Making everyone more transparent (and thus giving them less privacy) can as easily make things worse for us as better.
Worth mentioning that this menu entry is no longer as useful as it once was, given that Ubuntu now defaults to booting the default entry in three seconds -- which means that you have to know that Grub is there, and that you can hit escape to get that choice.
At which point, I miss Lilo -- where it would boot instantly to the default entry, unless you were holding a key when it loaded.
I realize I'm a little late in the game for this, and I give myself 50/50 odds that I'll actually send it in, but here goes:
I use PayPal right now because it is one of the more secure options out there. I give my financial details to one party (PayPal) instead of every site I do business with -- which means PayPal gives me the opportunity to review every single transaction, and approve or deny.
It's also nice and reassuring to visit www.paypal.com, and see an https URL the whole way through -- knowing nothing important is ever transmitted in the clear.
And for some small amount of money -- I forget exactly how much it is, but relatively cheap -- I can even get a physical security token, which, I believe, is also valid with VeriSign. And due to its implementation, this token requires no additional software -- I just read a number off the token and into a browser window. What's not to like?
These are the reasons a highly technical and security-conscious person might want to use PayPal. Highly secure, with a lot of control and choice.
Now, I can understand wanting to protect the less-technical users. Send them emails every now and then, telling them not to click links in emails. Warn them if they're not using a secure browser. Provide technical support, walkthroughs, and as much hand-holding as you like.
But please don't alienate those of us who know what we are doing by removing our choice. Don't block browsers simply for not supporting anti-phishing, or having it disabled -- some of us know how to read the address bar, and value our privacy. Block older, actually vulnerable browsers if you must, but do not make it a whitelist.
The day I have to turn on user-agent spoofing to get to my money is the day I take my money somewhere else.
Mostly because we expect it from governments and financial institutions. Remember, these are the sites that were required to support two-factor authentication, and instead, they now require you to type some five or so questions and answers about yourself -- you know, the kind that are usually used to help you, should you lose your password -- and require that you type one of those along with your password, and also look at a random "security picture".
Instead of, you know, handing out a physical security token, so it would actually be two-factor authentication. Or refusing to comply with the law, if it's really that expensive. But instead, they faked it halfway.
But every bank does it, so we're kind of jaded about it -- we expect it. Plus, no one of these banks has more people on their website than PayPal, I'd guess -- and eBay is now requiring PayPal. And there are those (like me) who use PayPal for additional security -- when I buy something, I am redirected back to PayPal's website, where I have to approve the purchase (with my PayPal username/password); much more secure than entering a credit card on anything HTTPS. That, and it's a tip jar...
In other words, they are big enough for it to hurt when they lock us out. There's the other thing -- I can just move to another bank if I don't like their website. There's not really much in the way of alternatives to PayPal.
Assuming it's a blacklist, and assuming it's based on actually vulnerable browsers, and not just browsers they don't like, then yes, I agree.
However, mentioning that they want people to use browsers with anti-phishing means they're likely never going to support the browser I use. So I will have to use some "approved" browser, once I've disabled the anti-phishing crap, of course.
In fact, the only way they could know if my browser supports anti-phishing is to use a whitelist, which means they're basically screwing third-party browsers. Which means you're going to improve IE-compliance a little, but I doubt it will do much for standards compliance.
Oh well. I'm going to wait and see. But if I'm nagged about my choice of browsers, I will stop using PayPal.
Amen!
With one comment -- I don't necessarily mind clever javascript crap that intercepts the onClick handler, because then middle-click-in-a-tab still works, rigth-click-copy-location still works, spidering still works, and browsing without Javascript still works.
But every time I see a link to javascript:void(0); I want to murder someone.
I'd actually propose at least the option to see it all at once. The main reason I like this is that quicksearch within my browser can work.
But at the same time, I like the idea of loading stuff on demand. I kind of like clever solutions like some javascript which detects a significant amount of scrolling, and loads some more stuff to the bottom of the page, so you can scroll down forever. But I don't like not being able to search there.
I guess that makes me neutral, but you did hit on one important point:
If you're going to have an ad to the left, an ad to the right, three ads in the middle, an add at the top, all of them flash except some text ads tucked away at the bottom, then please, for the love of god, put everything on one page. It's not that the ads are annoying, so much as that it's going to take a solid 20-30 seconds to load each page. If it's a 10 page article, we're talking about 5 minutes of pure loading.
Use graceful degradation, at least. That is: Actually use the alt text properly, or load your cute stuff by using javascript to search/replace the normal text.
I don't mind "print" when it really means "Flatten 10 pages into 1 and take out the 35 flash ads."
But make the page printable in the first place. And "email to a friend" is just retarded -- isn't that abuse waiting to happen?
Even worse, you don't need to provide drivers in some part of the world, but not in others. When South Park says "Sorry, England," it's funny, but still obnoxious. (Actually, for me, Cartman said "Get Flash you stupid hippie!") But when my video drivers are available only for Vista in the US, but for XP in the UK, that's where I draw the line.
Better, use sane URLs to start with. None of this "permalink" crap -- make the URL a permalink anyway.
And for people using alternate browsers/OSes, or people in Lynx for whatever reason. (Say what you will, but when X doesn't start, I appreciate any Lynx support I can get.)
Actually, I will go on all day. Here's some more:
Drop the www from your domain. Replace the whole thing with a permanent redirect to your normal domain. Or the other way, I don't care. But do not force me to type the www, and do not have identical pages both with and without the www.
Don't depend on Flash. Yes, I realize some ludicrously huge percentage of the world has flash, but even if you could assume 100%, there are many reasons not to use it.
Use text, not images.
If
And I suppose making the guys "cutesy" serves the same purpose? Or, for that matter, the cute children? It's made pretty clear who is what in anime.
Not that this really deserves a response. To even suggest such a thing is some combination paranoia, trolling, and a revelation -- what kind of a sick mind looks at Ghost in the Shell and calls it pedophilia?
I thought it was nothing more than an outlet for pedophiles? Make up your mind -- is it for pedophiles, or for toddlers?
Actually, you said exactly that.
WTF? I don't remember Spirited Away having anything to do with the future.
I remember visiting my cousin and watching her subtitled Sailor Moon movie. I noticed two things:
First, it sounds a lot less retarded in Japanese. That's probably partly because I can't understand what they're saying, but probably also because it seems to be the same exact group of voice actors doing every single English dub of Anime. Kind of ruins it for me to have Shinji of Evangeleon sound exactly like Goku of DragonBall Z.
I do feel better about it being a reasonably large company getting the rights, though. When Disney does Studio Ghibli movies, they actually get talented people -- and different people -- to do the voices. (Patrick Stewart was in Nausicaa, I think.)
Second thing: While I had to have this pointed out to me (no way I was going to sit through the movie again), there was a fair amount of censorship just from the subbed version to the dubbed version. I assume they were both US releases... Apparently, two of the older Sailor Scouts are lesbians, and there's no secret made of it in the subbed version -- but dialog like "There are so many fun things to do when you're an adult!" get completely dropped in the dubbed version.
If they can manage to screw up Sailor Moon, imagine what they'd do to things like Ghost in the Shell?