this says that you must thank hackers and enthusiasts, and not microsoft, if you can run an alternative OS.
I am no fan of the new apple, but the tibook with openfirmware ran debian-ppc back in 2003 with less issues that you have now with ia32 systems, that is all hardware worked with open source drivers with good performance. Why did a port of a niche OS have less problems than a much more popular and mature version has on its most popular arch? hmmmmm...
I don't buy the security excuse. A secret key system doesn't buy much more security than a simple switch or jumper to protect bios and boot sectors (good luck to the hacker trying to mess remotely with them, put it inside the case and locked cases are safe too). Keys will stay in a db managed by the vendor (risk of leaks), and losing the key will mean big headaches
It's a scam to make hardware obsolete.
Preventing linux, which incidentally makes a laptop gotten @ 80eur off ebay perfectly updated and funcional, and makes MS happy, is not the only aim.
I am not going to buy a device that i can't emergency boot from an usb key like current pcs do.
... it seems that installing stuff on one's pc is taboo, and that happens now, when A. storage is not a problem B. installation can be done by easy to use app/package repositories C. money is not a problem because tons of free software are around.
Of course the idea makes sense because most people go with the instant gratification of a prompt in a web page and don't really care if their mostly idle cpu has to work more for their hello world.
>The key to successful personal computers lies in making the human-machine interface as natural as possible to make sure people can smoothly interact with their computer so they don't have to think about what they want to do.
Absolutely correct, but the last time something like that was achieved was... in pre-quicktime MacOS days, when everything but very vertical applications had the same menu layout and action names. Quicktime started breaking apple's own guidelines and made something "fancy": windows always was an UI mess, maybe they wanted to look less alien:D
Now, the UI or, more precisely, the users' familiarity with one particular UI, is a mere instrument for OS and application makers to keep them from easily switching to competing platforms. That's why many software makers devote more resources to reinvent the wheel in UI than to clean up performance and security.
Back to topic, fancy visuals are important as you say, but now people NEED to work with their fancy gadgets, and a fast and secure operating environment has its place. Good luck to inferno though because the gadget makers prefer to sell fancy power sucking toys every two years than optimized terminals every six.
in fact, technologically speaking, proprietary OSs are irrelevant. They sell well nonetheless because they offer some possibilities to make hardware obsolete... by not supporting it.
Personally i didn't try to get the preinstalled win7 reimbursed because i might need the fonts.
If you are curious to know which office suite it is, just hang around the it department managers of these hospital. They will likely be taken to dinner by sales drones of that suite for the next 12 months or so:)
> It is always possible to invent needless, unprovable elements for every subject.
In fact the teacher invented a needless, unprovable - that is, wrong, as my previous comment underlines - implication: "the universe has always existed (let's suppose it did), therefore no creator is necessary".
And, are you sure you need to carve out all needless things? every prediction and model made by science is based on the assumption that the laws modelling it will not change. The only reason for that assumption is that we never witnessed such changes. Such assumption is therefore unproven, unprovable till the end of time, and not needed because we don't need to make any predictions for any event to occur. So, occam's razor should be applied and... er... scrap science altogether.
Also you are confusing internally needless with needless. Defining a system as closed does not disprove anything outside it. A cellular automata simulation needs electricity to go on, but if it's not interactive it is internally self sufficient and we are completely needless from the simulation. You can decouple the simulation from the simulating equipment and see it as a concept (logos): we end up with a simulation plus the logically needless transcendent plane which not only causes it, but it's the only thing giving it meaning.
> Before you start talking about creator beings you have to talk about their plane of existence, how they came into existence, what they're made of, how they developed intelligent thought and how they affect our reality. An intelligent creator is possibly the most complex thing imaginable.
You can't talk about the transcendent, by definition, and here we are, instead, applying human concepts to the transcendent. It's a logic mistake: "the creator needs a creator"? Nope. It could have one, it doesn't need one. The concept doesn't even make sense unless you make a ton of assumptions: "create", "need", "creator", should be defined in a compatible way in the transcendent plane. What is a creator? something that causes the creation out of wish. But "cause" needs "time" to be defined with one direction exactly as it is in our world, or better in our model of our world. Reversing time swaps cause and effect, after all.
Now, if you believe in some messages reportedly coming from some deities of your choice, you can build a model of a divine plane, but it has no validity outside the faith. A god saying "I am" might mean: "your concept of existence can be very roughly translated to my plane and applied to me", or "I am present in my world exactly like you are in yours", or "The world is one of my aspects" or something else impossible to fathom.
So, creationists pushing their idea against science are wrong because it's *independent* of science. They should say, I believe god created man in his image, simply because it's written like that. Fullstop. Modelling in your mind one of the possible ways this statement could be reasonable TO YOU, and denying some theories because of that, is sign of fear, not faith.
On the other hand, if science discovers the time machine and traces every single interaction that occurs in every single atom from the formation of planet earth to the manifestation of the first sentient being, it cannot yet proclaim there is no creator of man: an eternal creator can instead come up with an universe made of random interactions whose "outcome" is exactly his wish; determinism and randomness of those interactions are quite meaningless concepts from a POV which is independent from time.
> (...) there's no description of what a creator does or how it should affect the universe(...) You are comparing a bunch of particles, that are immanent, with a transcendent god. The "how" with the "why". No matter if the why is applicable or not, this is confusion.
Should a god even start affecting the universe somehow, as a requirement for its role as creator? A god doesn't need to patch things up in the universe "after" its creation, the act of creation is
I have no problem with the theory that there is no prime cause, even if it still stinks of rationalization: "There's no divine/transcendent plane so all causes of all phenomena must go back to infinity".
The huge logic error is thinking that a universe which has always been and always will be can't be the object of creation. A transcendent being is beyond time, if it "wants to create", then it can create an universe with a beginning or an eternal one. (The concepts of will and creation are not necessarily defined in a transcendent realm so we need the quotes because we don't really know what we're talking about)
You can create an eternal universe, too: y=42 * t. y is the single cell of your universe, its state is defined by t which we call time, and it can be calculated for every value of t. It's a banal universe with no causality, but it's enough to call BS on this class of debates.
Scientist, keep looking for the mechanical causes for the universe in its current form, it's fascinating. But leave the rest to the philosopher. Uh and philosopher, wake the fsck up.
Which is a good point in the false assumption that microsoft would come out with similar reports instead of covering the thing up and accusing whistleblowers of being terrorists.
But let's assume MS can indeed keep their servers secure. Closed source might help if the source is bulletproof. Realise, though, that a secure netboot system over the internet needs a trusted path between your pc and ms server which must be protected from the user too; if it weren't bad enough, nothing then technically prevents MS to send whatever data about the user to its server through this path masqueraded as validation or authorization procedures.
PS. I first read "windows 8 to fight PRIVACY with the cloud", am I good or what:)
honeycomb is android for tablets FTFY And we were speaking about android.
Delaying source code release is not a good thing when you're google and you became successful with the beta label in your offerings. We have enough nannies already.
There are also shipping costs to take into account. I'd have simply prolonged the subscription period of the customers who received the physical magazine, even at a small loss, because losing a customer is worse in the long run.
For all gods defined as transcendent, there is no possible evidence that a manifestation comes from god vs. somebody immanent with enough power over the universe (just as a cellular automaton that somehow acquired root in a system can act as an admin, which would be the transcendent equivalent), ergo belief is the only way to acknowledge a transcendent god.
I keep seeing defenders of the faith lacking love and defenders of logic lacking rationality. Which makes sense, in a way, since the really really powerful should prefer widespread agnosticism to both faith and atheism, as both are obstacles to the exercise of complete control.
> What kind of idiot are you? This is the weirdest nonsequitur ever. I'm the kind of idiot who knows how to spell "non sequitur" and spot a couple of "ad hominem" attacks in this paragraph.
> Who said GPL violators must be protected? I sure didn't. If you didn't then they must be treated just as music copyright infringers are.
> There is ground between invalidating compliance and not taking action. Which is reasonable but, since nothing comparable is applied to music copyright infringers, you are indeed protecting the GPL infringers giving them a special treatment.
> The world is not "they're free to kill off GPL/must be sued into oblivion". Which I asserted... um... where?
I don't even assert that that Florian guy is correct. My problem is your "nuclear response" definition for a literal interpretation of a license where it's clearly written "termination", in a world where copying a cd can land people in jail.
The point is: a Congress that endorses war is not made up of Christian fundamentalists. No matter what they profess themselves to be, which is less relevant than actions (Mt 21:28).
> How can we expect rational debate and careful consideration of complicated issues if we all jump to extreme reactions even at the slighest provocation.
Is the issue complicated? Who is the master and who is the servant? What do constitutions say?
If I am the master I can say: "uuugh those servants ought to be all hanged by their balls". And expect no repercussion, I simply voiced an opinion on my servants, I am not even required to be remotely correct, I am the master. If I am not allowed to say that, I am not the master. Simple.
Of course the moment I lift a finger to hurt somebody or somebody's rightfully owned property, it's right to beat the crap out of me, because I am hurting other masters.
So, why doesn't the public servants just keep an eye on violent speech and ACT when ACTS take place? How does censoring help, other than making this rightful mode of operation harder, because censored people will go underground?
The answer is simple, censoring is the objective, not the reaction.
London riots serve two purposes: they scare people into not following the arab countries route and start protests on the street (they saw what protests end up into), and they let servants come up with rules for their masters to follow.
Those who basically support criminalizing their electorate, contradicting the principle that punishment must be proportional to damage? i'd say it's a data point worthy of consideration.
Wait, we live in a world where a copied cd is a serious offence right? GPL violators must be protected because they are an economic force and screw music buyers which are a comparable one? no wai. Screw those that pollute GPL code with their crap and hide it, no matter what you think of the GPL.
> A major version number increase should signify massive changes. It should indicate to us that we should disregard any previous knowledge we have, and learn the software product from scratch
You said it: should. But it doesn't, since the eighties at least. So what do we do? skip useful software because of it? That would be even less professional than inflating version numbers.
Slashdot Mirror
this says that you must thank hackers and enthusiasts, and not microsoft, if you can run an alternative OS.
I am no fan of the new apple, but the tibook with openfirmware ran debian-ppc back in 2003 with less issues that you have now with ia32 systems, that is all hardware worked with open source drivers with good performance.
Why did a port of a niche OS have less problems than a much more popular and mature version has on its most popular arch? hmmmmm...
IMHO it's only a way to push the still non existent nokia winphone to tech headlines. The guy is an useful idiot or part of the plan from the start.
I don't buy the security excuse. A secret key system doesn't buy much more security than a simple switch or jumper to protect bios and boot sectors (good luck to the hacker trying to mess remotely with them, put it inside the case and locked cases are safe too). Keys will stay in a db managed by the vendor (risk of leaks), and losing the key will mean big headaches
It's a scam to make hardware obsolete.
Preventing linux, which incidentally makes a laptop gotten @ 80eur off ebay perfectly updated and funcional, and makes MS happy, is not the only aim.
I am not going to buy a device that i can't emergency boot from an usb key like current pcs do.
... it seems that installing stuff on one's pc is taboo, and that happens now, when A. storage is not a problem B. installation can be done by easy to use app/package repositories C. money is not a problem because tons of free software are around.
Of course the idea makes sense because most people go with the instant gratification of a prompt in a web page and don't really care if their mostly idle cpu has to work more for their hello world.
>The key to successful personal computers lies in making the human-machine interface as natural as possible to make sure people can smoothly interact with their computer so they don't have to think about what they want to do.
Absolutely correct, but the last time something like that was achieved was... in pre-quicktime MacOS days, when everything but very vertical applications had the same menu layout and action names. Quicktime started breaking apple's own guidelines and made something "fancy": windows always was an UI mess, maybe they wanted to look less alien :D
Now, the UI or, more precisely, the users' familiarity with one particular UI, is a mere instrument for OS and application makers to keep them from easily switching to competing platforms. That's why many software makers devote more resources to reinvent the wheel in UI than to clean up performance and security.
Back to topic, fancy visuals are important as you say, but now people NEED to work with their fancy gadgets, and a fast and secure operating environment has its place. Good luck to inferno though because the gadget makers prefer to sell fancy power sucking toys every two years than optimized terminals every six.
The problem is that they have to protect the brand from the truth.
It's a truth for the whole industry, sure. Other corporations would do exactly the same, but they don't have the needed walled garden, sure.
It's no surprise, sure.
Vista.
in fact, technologically speaking, proprietary OSs are irrelevant.
They sell well nonetheless because they offer some possibilities to make hardware obsolete... by not supporting it.
Personally i didn't try to get the preinstalled win7 reimbursed because i might need the fonts.
If you are curious to know which office suite it is, just hang around the it department managers of these hospital. They will likely be taken to dinner by sales drones of that suite for the next 12 months or so :)
> It is always possible to invent needless, unprovable elements for every subject.
In fact the teacher invented a needless, unprovable - that is, wrong, as my previous comment underlines - implication: "the universe has always existed (let's suppose it did), therefore no creator is necessary".
And, are you sure you need to carve out all needless things? every prediction and model made by science is based on the assumption that the laws modelling it will not change. The only reason for that assumption is that we never witnessed such changes. Such assumption is therefore unproven, unprovable till the end of time, and not needed because we don't need to make any predictions for any event to occur. So, occam's razor should be applied and... er... scrap science altogether.
Also you are confusing internally needless with needless. Defining a system as closed does not disprove anything outside it. A cellular automata simulation needs electricity to go on, but if it's not interactive it is internally self sufficient and we are completely needless from the simulation. You can decouple the simulation from the simulating equipment and see it as a concept (logos): we end up with a simulation plus the logically needless transcendent plane which not only causes it, but it's the only thing giving it meaning.
> Before you start talking about creator beings you have to talk about their plane of existence, how they came into existence, what they're made of, how they developed intelligent thought and how they affect our reality. An intelligent creator is possibly the most complex thing imaginable.
You can't talk about the transcendent, by definition, and here we are, instead, applying human concepts to the transcendent.
It's a logic mistake: "the creator needs a creator"? Nope. It could have one, it doesn't need one. The concept doesn't even make sense unless you make a ton of assumptions: "create", "need", "creator", should be defined in a compatible way in the transcendent plane. What is a creator? something that causes the creation out of wish. But "cause" needs "time" to be defined with one direction exactly as it is in our world, or better in our model of our world. Reversing time swaps cause and effect, after all.
Now, if you believe in some messages reportedly coming from some deities of your choice, you can build a model of a divine plane, but it has no validity outside the faith. A god saying "I am" might mean: "your concept of existence can be very roughly translated to my plane and applied to me", or "I am present in my world exactly like you are in yours", or "The world is one of my aspects" or something else impossible to fathom.
So, creationists pushing their idea against science are wrong because it's *independent* of science. They should say, I believe god created man in his image, simply because it's written like that. Fullstop. Modelling in your mind one of the possible ways this statement could be reasonable TO YOU, and denying some theories because of that, is sign of fear, not faith.
On the other hand, if science discovers the time machine and traces every single interaction that occurs in every single atom from the formation of planet earth to the manifestation of the first sentient being, it cannot yet proclaim there is no creator of man: an eternal creator can instead come up with an universe made of random interactions whose "outcome" is exactly his wish; determinism and randomness of those interactions are quite meaningless concepts from a POV which is independent from time.
> (...) there's no description of what a creator does or how it should affect the universe(...)
You are comparing a bunch of particles, that are immanent, with a transcendent god. The "how" with the "why". No matter if the why is applicable or not, this is confusion.
Should a god even start affecting the universe somehow, as a requirement for its role as creator?
A god doesn't need to patch things up in the universe "after" its creation, the act of creation is
I have no problem with the theory that there is no prime cause, even if it still stinks of rationalization: "There's no divine/transcendent plane so all causes of all phenomena must go back to infinity".
The huge logic error is thinking that a universe which has always been and always will be can't be the object of creation. A transcendent being is beyond time, if it "wants to create", then it can create an universe with a beginning or an eternal one.
(The concepts of will and creation are not necessarily defined in a transcendent realm so we need the quotes because we don't really know what we're talking about)
You can create an eternal universe, too: y=42 * t.
y is the single cell of your universe, its state is defined by t which we call time, and it can be calculated for every value of t. It's a banal universe with no causality, but it's enough to call BS on this class of debates.
Scientist, keep looking for the mechanical causes for the universe in its current form, it's fascinating. But leave the rest to the philosopher. Uh and philosopher, wake the fsck up.
Sweaty fingers, in the summer afternoon
look up "haiku", which a webpage mentions:
confusion ensues.
He's not a fanboy, he just is not satisfied with the level of security offered by debian and fedora and therefore chose... er... windows.
Which is a good point in the false assumption that microsoft would come out with similar reports instead of covering the thing up and accusing whistleblowers of being terrorists.
But let's assume MS can indeed keep their servers secure. Closed source might help if the source is bulletproof. Realise, though, that a secure netboot system over the internet needs a trusted path between your pc and ms server which must be protected from the user too; if it weren't bad enough, nothing then technically prevents MS to send whatever data about the user to its server through this path masqueraded as validation or authorization procedures.
PS. I first read "windows 8 to fight PRIVACY with the cloud", am I good or what :)
honeycomb is android for tablets
FTFY
And we were speaking about android.
Delaying source code release is not a good thing when you're google and you became successful with the beta label in your offerings. We have enough nannies already.
There are also shipping costs to take into account. I'd have simply prolonged the subscription period of the customers who received the physical magazine, even at a small loss, because losing a customer is worse in the long run.
For all gods defined as transcendent, there is no possible evidence that a manifestation comes from god vs. somebody immanent with enough power over the universe (just as a cellular automaton that somehow acquired root in a system can act as an admin, which would be the transcendent equivalent), ergo belief is the only way to acknowledge a transcendent god.
I keep seeing defenders of the faith lacking love and defenders of logic lacking rationality. Which makes sense, in a way, since the really really powerful should prefer widespread agnosticism to both faith and atheism, as both are obstacles to the exercise of complete control.
As FB would say,
it's complicated.
> What kind of idiot are you? This is the weirdest nonsequitur ever.
I'm the kind of idiot who knows how to spell "non sequitur" and spot a couple of "ad hominem" attacks in this paragraph.
> Who said GPL violators must be protected? I sure didn't.
If you didn't then they must be treated just as music copyright infringers are.
> There is ground between invalidating compliance and not taking action.
Which is reasonable but, since nothing comparable is applied to music copyright infringers, you are indeed protecting the GPL infringers giving them a special treatment.
> The world is not "they're free to kill off GPL/must be sued into oblivion".
Which I asserted... um... where?
I don't even assert that that Florian guy is correct. My problem is your "nuclear response" definition for a literal interpretation of a license where it's clearly written "termination", in a world where copying a cd can land people in jail.
The point is: a Congress that endorses war is not made up of Christian fundamentalists. No matter what they profess themselves to be, which is less relevant than actions (Mt 21:28).
> How can we expect rational debate and careful consideration of complicated issues if we all jump to extreme reactions even at the slighest provocation.
Is the issue complicated? Who is the master and who is the servant? What do constitutions say?
If I am the master I can say: "uuugh those servants ought to be all hanged by their balls". And expect no repercussion, I simply voiced an opinion on my servants, I am not even required to be remotely correct, I am the master. If I am not allowed to say that, I am not the master. Simple.
Of course the moment I lift a finger to hurt somebody or somebody's rightfully owned property, it's right to beat the crap out of me, because I am hurting other masters.
So, why doesn't the public servants just keep an eye on violent speech and ACT when ACTS take place? How does censoring help, other than making this rightful mode of operation harder, because censored people will go underground?
The answer is simple, censoring is the objective, not the reaction.
London riots serve two purposes: they scare people into not following the arab countries route and start protests on the street (they saw what protests end up into), and they let servants come up with rules for their masters to follow.
Those who basically support criminalizing their electorate, contradicting the principle that punishment must be proportional to damage? i'd say it's a data point worthy of consideration.
And if they are employees did they get paid? let's see the contracts?
Wait, we live in a world where a copied cd is a serious offence right? GPL violators must be protected because they are an economic force and screw music buyers which are a comparable one? no wai. Screw those that pollute GPL code with their crap and hide it, no matter what you think of the GPL.
> A major version number increase should signify massive changes. It should indicate to us that we should disregard any previous knowledge we have, and learn the software product from scratch
You said it: should. But it doesn't, since the eighties at least. So what do we do? skip useful software because of it? That would be even less professional than inflating version numbers.