While you have a point, I don't think sufficent resources have ever been thrown at the Wine/Cedega project, relative to the scope of what they're trying to accomplish. A Mac version, which could potentially offer a larger userbase than Linux, on a platform where there is a lot of history of users being willing to pay for software (you don't have the "if I wanted to pay for software, I'd run Windows" mentality, or the perception of it, which is just as bad), could do this.
Unfortunately you have the "if I wanted to run Windows, I wouldn't have a Mac" mentality instead. One of the big draws for using Wine under Linux is that often times you want to run software where equivalents are not available. For example, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Quicken, QuickTime, etc... (Sorry but OO.org, the Gimp, GnuCash, and MPlayer) aren't exactly drop in replacements.
The Mac already has these and many other commercial software packages available. I really can't see why you'd run Wine under OSX for the most part, except maybe games...but you'll never be able to play the most cutting edge stuff under Cedega and people on Macs are used to waiting for Mac ports anyway.
The problem is they often know it's indiscriminate, but think they're safe anyway because they feel their data is boring. That is they know it's indiscriminate but feel it's personal (as you would if you were being hacked).
They feel that it's indiscriminate in the way that muggings are...that is that the mugger often picks a specific target based on various factors like how easy the person appears to be to mug, or if they are wearing jewelry, but often doesn't know the victim. I know those are discrimating features, but when people think indiscriminate they still think they can prevent the attacks by making the person next to them appear to be the better target.
They have a hard time grasping that almost all computer attacks occur completely without any regard or consideration to the target whatsoever. That for the most part computers get attacked equally and constantly. That defenses don't stop or prevent the attacks, but instead prevent them from succeeding.
Saying "non personal" more accurately describes the absolutely indiscriminate (weird, but true) nature of the attacks. That is there absolutely nothing on a personal level they can do to reduce their chances of being attacked.
When was the last time you had to take your car in because it wouldn't start after and as a result of playing with the radio?
For people with $500 computers, their documents are often times far more valuable then the machine itself. They can easily render those unrecoverable by "playing with the dials". Imagine a person that accidentally wipes out the only copy of their thesis...I guarantee you they would pay more than the value of their computer if there was some magic way to get it back.
The question is can you really not do it? Do you not know how to clean spyware off of a machine, or setup a firewall?
I'm sorry, but in the general case a person with a CS degree can "fix broken wintel boxes". Granted they didn't teach that in college, but that doesn't make it less true.
Now, you may not like doing it and that an entirely different matter.
You are crazy if you think the lay person needs to know that stuff. Most people don't care if they can do math on a CPU. They want to find a file after they saved it in Word, keep from getting a virus, buy crap on the Internet, write data to cd, etc...
Some may want to know how a computer works on the highest of levels, that is to know what the various parts (RAM, CPU, Motherboard, etc) are and maybe how to put one together or at least add a component.
Believe it or not the majority of people have a very hard time doing the above. They all just "get by". When they perform operations on the machine, they have no idea what the outcome will be. These people will hit print over and over and over and over when nothing comes out of the printer like it's a lottery.
You want to explain transistors and XOR to people who think 3.5" disks are hard disks, that hard disks are memory, and think that the right mouse button is their backup? Cripes...by the time you get to that level, they'll be bored or dead and your book will be too heavy for them to take out of the store.
Your approach is more like an introductory course in computer science and implies people understand the above and want to know even more. That is not the target audience described in the original question.
In my experience I've noticed that most people do this because both things are measured using the same units (i.e. bytes). In fact the typical response when I ask people why they have trouble discerning the two is, "Well they're both measured in bytes aren't they?"
The confusion ends when I ask them if they think a gallon of milk and gallon of blood are the same thing. Typically works every time.
It may not be personal to you, but it sure is hell personal to me when someone tries to hack into my machine.
That is exactly the problem. It may be personal to you, but it isn't personal at all. Indiscriminate isn't good enough, because they still feel that through actions they take like not doing online banking or what not they are somehow less attractive of a target.
I encounter this all the time as a system administrator. I use a strong password policy which includes a dictionary check. When they can't use a certain password, I usually explain why using a password consisting of real words is a problem, they get it but invariably ask, "Why would someone want to hack into my email, it's so boring?"
They know on a certain level that the attacks are indescriminate because just about everyone has either received a virus or phishing attempt. Some even know the attacks are automated, but they still feel for some reason that the person next door has more interesting info then they do and hence is a more likely target.
While I mostly agree with you; the poster was using KVM in this instance to abbreviate keyboard, monitor, and mouse which you did discuss. They were not referring to a KVM switch, just merely using the name as a shorthand for the devices you mentioned.
Since when did the Windows Installer support doing that while doing a typical install? I agree with your other comment, it is silly to expect a several year old XP install CD to support new hardware, but it also equally silly that a typical Windows install doesn't support reading drivers from any other media other than floppy.
I thought I was being prudent about security when the first thing I did after installing windows was plugging in my ethernet cord and running windows update. Little did I know . . . In the time it took me to run windows update I had already been infected with 6 pieces of malicious software.
Putting a machine on the Internet for any length of time without a firewall is not being prudent about security. After a fresh install, you turn on the built in firewall first, then plug in the ethernet cable and then immediately connect to Windows Update. Alternatively, you can hook up to a broadband router doing NAT.
Thankfully the google pack install comes with norton antivirus, or I probably never would have noticed.
Hopefully you reformatted after this, and did the above. Once a machine is compromised you can never be completely sure of its security again.
I now understand why so many windows users get their boxes owned. If you don't pay attention to updates, you are fucked.
That and a lack of understanding about security. Even the most basic security measures involve always running a firewall, which unfortunately Microsoft didn't seem to understand since they included one and didn't switch it on by default until SP2.
MHO that should be countered by a public service announcement-type campaign (if it did indeed become a problem, which here, it never really was) to teens of legal drinking age that their ability to buy alcohol came with responsibilities, one of which was not to purchase for a minor.
That's great except that public announcements don't actually work. People still drink and drive all the time. People still don't wear seat belts or bike helmets. People still smoke, etc...
Whether or not teenage drinking would be a problem I can't say, but I believe that is the main reason for the drinking age being 21. Making the drinking age 21 does a reasonable job of making alcohol more inaccessible to people under 18, which in my opinion is probably a good thing. A person who turns 18 is just too likely to know too many minors (i.e. people under 18).
I don't think the laws should be based on the assumption that people are going to break them.
Except that people do. That's kind of the point really. We wouldn't really need laws prohibiting things if people didn't do those things.
I think at 18, nobody's going to be able to stop you if you want to drink anyway (you'll get the alcohol through an older friend or something).
In a way, that's sort of the point. If the drinking age were 18, then people who were younger say 15 would be able to easily get it through an older friend.
Countries and companies are plural forms of country and company. You're looking for the possessive form. These would be country's and company's as in:
I find it so odd. If a US company that does business with a foreign government ignores the laws in that company (country) it gets nailed for being an all powerful multi-national evil mega-corp unless you don't agree with that country's laws? I happen to agree that Microsoft should not have pulled it(,) but I (I'm) often considered US centric in my opinions. How should a company act when faced with a country that doesn't respect the core values of that company's home country?
Why are you sick to death of this? The fact that you are sick of hearing it, means that you probably hear it quite a bit. Don't you think it's possible that perhaps MS Office compatibility isn't as good as your limited experience may suggest it is?
Someone mentions that they often encounter documents that OOo won't open correctly and you flip out? Just because you don't encounter problems, doesn't mean other people don't. We often have research reports with 100s of pages with lots of graphics, graphs, and formatting elements and they don't always render quite right. Powerpoint, which you admit you don't use, has a long way to go. Lots of animations don't work, templates don't always load right, etc. In calc, there's often problems when macros are used.
I'm glad that OOo works for you. I wish it worked for us, because if I could get everyone switched to Firefox (a pretty easy sell), Thunderbird, and OOo...I could pretty much dump Windows here altogether which is my ultimate goal.
Actually, compatibility does have to be 100% perfect. I really want to switch users over to Open Office from Microsoft Office, but it's very difficult to make a case when they open documents and they don't look right.
Version 2 is a lot better, but it's still not good enough. On all new machines, I install Open Office, but I'm inevitably asked later to install Microsoft Office because some document they try to open doesn't work right.
And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.
Why not? Switching banks isn't too hard...it may take a month or two to get your bill payments and deposits sorted out, but you just maintain two accounts at that time.
Why didn't you just call the number on the warranty slip? In most cases, that's what you're encouraged to do anyway. Then you don't have to deal with the store at all.
This is true in many cases. If you find it liberating to do it at Indian retail shops, you should try it other shops. You can haggle at many privately owned small businesses where the person behind the counter is often the owner. At the very least, it seldom hurts to ask.
Slashdot Mirror
It's only a violation if someone downloads it.
Just like it is a violation for me to photocopy a book and attempt to distribute the photocopy.
Actually it's more like you putting a book next to a photocopier.
While you have a point, I don't think sufficent resources have ever been thrown at the Wine/Cedega project, relative to the scope of what they're trying to accomplish. A Mac version, which could potentially offer a larger userbase than Linux, on a platform where there is a lot of history of users being willing to pay for software (you don't have the "if I wanted to pay for software, I'd run Windows" mentality, or the perception of it, which is just as bad), could do this.
Unfortunately you have the "if I wanted to run Windows, I wouldn't have a Mac" mentality instead. One of the big draws for using Wine under Linux is that often times you want to run software where equivalents are not available. For example, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Quicken, QuickTime, etc... (Sorry but OO.org, the Gimp, GnuCash, and MPlayer) aren't exactly drop in replacements.
The Mac already has these and many other commercial software packages available. I really can't see why you'd run Wine under OSX for the most part, except maybe games...but you'll never be able to play the most cutting edge stuff under Cedega and people on Macs are used to waiting for Mac ports anyway.
What is exactly the problem?
The problem is they often know it's indiscriminate, but think they're safe anyway because they feel their data is boring. That is they know it's indiscriminate but feel it's personal (as you would if you were being hacked).
They feel that it's indiscriminate in the way that muggings are...that is that the mugger often picks a specific target based on various factors like how easy the person appears to be to mug, or if they are wearing jewelry, but often doesn't know the victim. I know those are discrimating features, but when people think indiscriminate they still think they can prevent the attacks by making the person next to them appear to be the better target.
They have a hard time grasping that almost all computer attacks occur completely without any regard or consideration to the target whatsoever. That for the most part computers get attacked equally and constantly. That defenses don't stop or prevent the attacks, but instead prevent them from succeeding.
Saying "non personal" more accurately describes the absolutely indiscriminate (weird, but true) nature of the attacks. That is there absolutely nothing on a personal level they can do to reduce their chances of being attacked.
When was the last time you had to take your car in because it wouldn't start after and as a result of playing with the radio?
For people with $500 computers, their documents are often times far more valuable then the machine itself. They can easily render those unrecoverable by "playing with the dials". Imagine a person that accidentally wipes out the only copy of their thesis...I guarantee you they would pay more than the value of their computer if there was some magic way to get it back.
The question is can you really not do it? Do you not know how to clean spyware off of a machine, or setup a firewall?
I'm sorry, but in the general case a person with a CS degree can "fix broken wintel boxes". Granted they didn't teach that in college, but that doesn't make it less true.
Now, you may not like doing it and that an entirely different matter.
You are crazy if you think the lay person needs to know that stuff. Most people don't care if they can do math on a CPU. They want to find a file after they saved it in Word, keep from getting a virus, buy crap on the Internet, write data to cd, etc...
Some may want to know how a computer works on the highest of levels, that is to know what the various parts (RAM, CPU, Motherboard, etc) are and maybe how to put one together or at least add a component.
Believe it or not the majority of people have a very hard time doing the above. They all just "get by". When they perform operations on the machine, they have no idea what the outcome will be. These people will hit print over and over and over and over when nothing comes out of the printer like it's a lottery.
You want to explain transistors and XOR to people who think 3.5" disks are hard disks, that hard disks are memory, and think that the right mouse button is their backup? Cripes...by the time you get to that level, they'll be bored or dead and your book will be too heavy for them to take out of the store.
Your approach is more like an introductory course in computer science and implies people understand the above and want to know even more. That is not the target audience described in the original question.
In my experience I've noticed that most people do this because both things are measured using the same units (i.e. bytes). In fact the typical response when I ask people why they have trouble discerning the two is, "Well they're both measured in bytes aren't they?"
The confusion ends when I ask them if they think a gallon of milk and gallon of blood are the same thing. Typically works every time.
It may not be personal to you, but it sure is hell personal to me when someone tries to hack into my machine.
That is exactly the problem. It may be personal to you, but it isn't personal at all. Indiscriminate isn't good enough, because they still feel that through actions they take like not doing online banking or what not they are somehow less attractive of a target.
I encounter this all the time as a system administrator. I use a strong password policy which includes a dictionary check. When they can't use a certain password, I usually explain why using a password consisting of real words is a problem, they get it but invariably ask, "Why would someone want to hack into my email, it's so boring?"
They know on a certain level that the attacks are indescriminate because just about everyone has either received a virus or phishing attempt. Some even know the attacks are automated, but they still feel for some reason that the person next door has more interesting info then they do and hence is a more likely target.
While I mostly agree with you; the poster was using KVM in this instance to abbreviate keyboard, monitor, and mouse which you did discuss. They were not referring to a KVM switch, just merely using the name as a shorthand for the devices you mentioned.
A rootkit by definition could easily disable/uninstall this plugin.
This only affected people who aren't afraid to agree to license agreements.
If you're referring to the EULA presented when putting in the CD, even if you clicked "No" it still installed the software anyway.
The original post said management.
While the person replying said "checkout line", the original post still makes sense.
You may want to ammend you signature. Firefox 1.5 is here.
Since when did the Windows Installer support doing that while doing a typical install? I agree with your other comment, it is silly to expect a several year old XP install CD to support new hardware, but it also equally silly that a typical Windows install doesn't support reading drivers from any other media other than floppy.
I thought I was being prudent about security when the first thing I did after installing windows was plugging in my ethernet cord and running windows update. Little did I know . . . In the time it took me to run windows update I had already been infected with 6 pieces of malicious software.
Putting a machine on the Internet for any length of time without a firewall is not being prudent about security. After a fresh install, you turn on the built in firewall first, then plug in the ethernet cable and then immediately connect to Windows Update. Alternatively, you can hook up to a broadband router doing NAT.
Thankfully the google pack install comes with norton antivirus, or I probably never would have noticed.
Hopefully you reformatted after this, and did the above. Once a machine is compromised you can never be completely sure of its security again.
I now understand why so many windows users get their boxes owned. If you don't pay attention to updates, you are fucked.
That and a lack of understanding about security. Even the most basic security measures involve always running a firewall, which unfortunately Microsoft didn't seem to understand since they included one and didn't switch it on by default until SP2.
MHO that should be countered by a public service announcement-type campaign (if it did indeed become a problem, which here, it never really was) to teens of legal drinking age that their ability to buy alcohol came with responsibilities, one of which was not to purchase for a minor.
That's great except that public announcements don't actually work. People still drink and drive all the time. People still don't wear seat belts or bike helmets. People still smoke, etc...
Whether or not teenage drinking would be a problem I can't say, but I believe that is the main reason for the drinking age being 21. Making the drinking age 21 does a reasonable job of making alcohol more inaccessible to people under 18, which in my opinion is probably a good thing. A person who turns 18 is just too likely to know too many minors (i.e. people under 18).
I don't think the laws should be based on the assumption that people are going to break them.
Except that people do. That's kind of the point really. We wouldn't really need laws prohibiting things if people didn't do those things.
I think at 18, nobody's going to be able to stop you if you want to drink anyway (you'll get the alcohol through an older friend or something).
In a way, that's sort of the point. If the drinking age were 18, then people who were younger say 15 would be able to easily get it through an older friend.
Countries and companies are plural forms of country and company. You're looking for the possessive form. These would be country's and company's as in:
I find it so odd. If a US company that does business with a foreign government ignores the laws in that company (country) it gets nailed for being an all powerful multi-national evil mega-corp unless you don't agree with that country's laws?
I happen to agree that Microsoft should not have pulled it(,) but I (I'm) often considered US centric in my opinions. How should a company act when faced with a country that doesn't respect the core values of that company's home country?
Wow...how's that foot tasting? Quite a nice lecture you gave on reading comprehension before, too bad you blew it with that post.
Why are you sick to death of this? The fact that you are sick of hearing it, means that you probably hear it quite a bit. Don't you think it's possible that perhaps MS Office compatibility isn't as good as your limited experience may suggest it is?
Someone mentions that they often encounter documents that OOo won't open correctly and you flip out? Just because you don't encounter problems, doesn't mean other people don't. We often have research reports with 100s of pages with lots of graphics, graphs, and formatting elements and they don't always render quite right. Powerpoint, which you admit you don't use, has a long way to go. Lots of animations don't work, templates don't always load right, etc. In calc, there's often problems when macros are used.
I'm glad that OOo works for you. I wish it worked for us, because if I could get everyone switched to Firefox (a pretty easy sell), Thunderbird, and OOo...I could pretty much dump Windows here altogether which is my ultimate goal.
Actually, compatibility does have to be 100% perfect. I really want to switch users over to Open Office from Microsoft Office, but it's very difficult to make a case when they open documents and they don't look right.
Version 2 is a lot better, but it's still not good enough. On all new machines, I install Open Office, but I'm inevitably asked later to install Microsoft Office because some document they try to open doesn't work right.
And switching banks because of browser compatibility isn't an option for most people.
Why not? Switching banks isn't too hard...it may take a month or two to get your bill payments and deposits sorted out, but you just maintain two accounts at that time.
Why didn't you just call the number on the warranty slip? In most cases, that's what you're encouraged to do anyway. Then you don't have to deal with the store at all.
Unfortunately yes. Don't think for an instant, that many Eastern countries aren't trying to do the same thing.
Like it or not, the west by in large is seen as successful...corrupt perhaps, but definitely successful.
This is true in many cases. If you find it liberating to do it at Indian retail shops, you should try it other shops. You can haggle at many privately owned small businesses where the person behind the counter is often the owner. At the very least, it seldom hurts to ask.