I'm not going to defend this non-story, but slashdot has always been sensationalist garbage. Trolling pieces about MS or whoever is the socially acceptable IT devil today. Poorly researched opinion pieces, blogspam, and an editorial bias designed to get your goat, make you comment, and visit the site obsessively to reply to those who disagree with you.
This formula gets pageviews. Dispassionate accurate articles don't. There's a reason why so many successful news sites have this kind of editorial bias of serving up items that get people talking in some way (agreeing, being outraged, etc).
I think its unethical marketing leading this craze. There's a whole lot of people out there that are just floundering at some crummy job, or never went to college, etc who see all these ads like "Be a game developer in 18 months!" or "Be a computer animator in 6 months!"
What they don't understand is that going from having zero programming experience to hacking C++ takes a lot longer than 18 months at a diploma mill. The materials are hard because the subject is hard. Even dumbed down a lot of these people fail because it turns out that these non-traditional students are crappy students in general.
I see this shit pretty often on tech sites with "Full Sail University" ads. Yet another expensive "private university" that markets directly to the general public with promises that I'm skeptical work out in the real world. 21 month Bachelor's in Software Dev/Game dev/Animation/Graphic Design? Right.
We are constantly dismiss non-probably events like invisible leprechauns hidden in the server room. Yet when it comes to your "invisible dad in the sky who gives eternal life" suddenly we're all concerned about the possibility. Biased much? Humans use a mechanism like Occam's razor constantly and its philosophically defensible.
Its very, very, very likely that the magical beings described in 1st century Jewish writings aren't real. The same way its very, very likely that Gandalf doesn't exist.
God does not exist because you can't prove it and the ONUS OF PROOF IS ON YOU. You're making an extraordianry claim with ZERO EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE. Everytime we look into the validity of miracles or other religious claims we see nothing but falsehoods. Get over it. If you accept god(s), then you must accept all fictional beings including Gandalf and Arthur Dent.
According to some research released by Brian Krebs, most exploits are Java based. Other research suggests that something like 70% of PCs have critical remotely exploitable conditions (plugins in browsers mostly.)
If infections fell recently its probably because companies like MS, AVG, etc are doing a better job catching catching malware before it infects people. Joe User doesn't understand that he needs to also update his Java and his Adobe products.
To be fair to MS, the Kinect did not employ any dirty tricks to keep it from being used on other equipment. If you read the blogs of the guys who built the first drivers, they reported none of the usual encryption tricks others like Sony and Nintendo are always using. Perhaps there's an argument about Japanese society's take on consumer rights/hacking, as these concepts are very Western or even explicitly American.
The only protectionism of the Kinect is see is that it does some crypto when talking to an Xbox. This exists so that competitors cannot build shoddy versions of the Kinect for the Xbox. Using the Kinect on other equipment seems to be hacker friendly, or at least, not explicitly anti-hacker.
Again, so what? This is a public discussion board and as such I can go on any tangent I like. Your pedantic rules absolutely do not apply. Unclench dude, you'll live longer.
So what? Most Windows infections are either trojans or exploit non-updated Java installs. We're not seeing any IE exploits lately or Silverlight or anything. Its trojans, Java, and Adobe Reader in order of vectors.
At the end of the day, the guy with administrator privs on the machine dictates how secure it is. If Ubuntu suddenly got 90% marketshare, it would be a malware nightmare just like Windows.
Err, Apple also brought us the one button mouse, fought USB as long as it could, and everytime I go to a meeting someone yells "anyone got a displayport adapter to vga so I can use this projector?" Not to mention some of us still need serial ports on our computers, but I guess that's beside the point.
Not to mention PC makers have had the option to not install the floppy years before Apple mandated it. That AMD really brought us into the 64 bit era, and that wifi was not at all an Apple thing. Or that I can buy a Dell Zino that does HDMI and Bluray for half the price of a Mac mini.
Look, relax, theyre just a company. They're not some perfect religion. Comments like yours just justify the Apple fanboy stereotype. Unclench, everything will be ok. Jobs is still alive and a massive millionaire.
>these are people who really shouldn't be allowed to operate equipment more complicated than an adjustable 3 hole punch.
Fine, but we shouldn't make site-wide policies based on the stupidity of the worst of the worst. Thats the real problem here. Because you have one moron, that doesnt mean you need to punish the other users with stupid UI decisions like "Oh, lets get rid of the recycling bin for all because Jane can't figure it out."
Any competent admin would be able to retrieve those deleted files and professionally explain how to properly use the bin. A short-sighted socially-inept nerdy/otaku-type would immediately hide it for all users. Its passive aggressive, wrong, and stupid.
Thank you for this. Unfortunately, Slashdot has become a haven for the OCD weirdo otaku guys who completely lose their shit when someone uses a computer in a way they don't approve. "OMG GET RID OF WIN7 AND PUT UBUNTU ON THERE. HERE ARE MY FAVORITE DESKTOPS IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE!!" or "OMG YOU USE CHROME?? SWITCH TO MONKEYBIRDFOX BETA.3!!!!" This kind of thing is just another form of hipsterism. Most geeks outgrow it, some don't.
I find that Jr. admins and people new to IT have this kind of fascist mentality. Instead of learning why something works or how their average user interacts with it, they just start mandating changes that they like and tell everyone to take a hike. Everyday users appreciate the recycling bin. I'm not even sure why this is a "Windows thing" when both Ubuntu and OSX offer the exact same functionality. Unfortunately, technology attracts a lot of socially inept fanboy types.
If anything, in my experience, the recycling bin should be expanded on to work more like Time Machine and by default have it store files deleted from network shares. End users are constantly making mistakes and the more users you have to support the more mistakes will appear. This is exactly why things like the bin make sense.
The secretary story is silly. You shouldnt change policy for all because of one edge case. That's like disabling right-click because someone had a senior moment and pressed the wrong button.
Yeah we need more loud-mouth self serving businessmen doing asshole tactics to just make a buck. Oh, you thought he was trying to start a charity? How cute.
Does it? I almost never use the keyboard on my Vibrant to send text messages. I just speak into it and it does a surprisingly good job.
Now that I'm so used to doing speech to text, using a mouse or a little keyboard on my htpc is incredibly annoying. I really should be able to talk into my remote and say stuff like "play this video." Or navigate by just saying "down, down, play."
Speech for the PC could be similar. RIght now I'm doing this with my kinect, so we're halfway there.
Assange signature condoms and the "I fled Sweden and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" shirts. I did find the "Let loose this cable" boxer shorts and "I'm probably going to fry" chef aprons to be a bit distasteful.
Not exactly. It looks like a competitor to the Overdrive system many libraries use. Overdrive is a sharepoint-like portal that delivers DRM'd ebooks (usually PDFs) to library patrons. Its kinda kludgy but popular and the defacto standard for this kind of thing.
Gutenburg is only public domain books, this system would deliver purchased ebooks and most likely apply its own DRM like Adobe's PDF DRM. If it didn't use DRM the library using it would most likely get in some kind of trouble.
Oh well, anything that competes with Overdrive is good with me.
The last four digits don't. Its the first 5 that can be translated into location.
My understanding is that if I knew your place of birth/hometown I could figure out the first five (or work it down to a small set) and just append the last four and have your social.
Storing socials is pretty crazy nowadays. Even Walgreens has stopped doing this. They do what hospitals do use a primary key of Lastname + birthdate, and the verify secondly with address or first name. Its not perfect but your number of collisions is low and that information isn't getting an identity thief much, especially compared to a social.
That is not a typical task and malware isn't the problem it used to be. Enabling automatic updates and running a basic free AV like MSE works wonders.
Not to mention deriding windows as not having remote capabilities is being silly. Remote Assistance in built in not to mention free services like logmein, gotomypc, etc. On top of it, if you want to get cute you can install an ssh daemon/cygwin and powershell and have the cli coolness you like.
>I just logged into your machine using ssh and made the change from here..
In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking. Windows is far from perfect but lets face it, you need to get in the command line to do anything useful with any linux desktop.
Regardless, I actually like Ubuntu because it lets me do things cheaply/free that I don't want to pay for, namely run various services. I am absolutely not interested in running it as a desktop and the idea that there's an overwhelming demand for Linux workstations is silly. Ubuntu has probably maxed out the real demand for Linux workstations, many of which are cases like yours where you force it on a relative and then play sysadmin and pat yourself on the back. Seems a little odd that its only feasible if you have someone in your family who is very familiar with supporting linux workstations.
>You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering
"Grandma, quit calling me, just change the button_layout string with vi. Sheez. No lets do it the easy way, type menu:maximize,minimize,close in the earlier box."
Yeah, I wonder why Ubuntu isn't at 99% marketshre.
XP is an 11 year old operating system. Are you really comparing it to the latest version of Ubuntu? No one is buying Norton, everyone is using Security Essentials for free.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make other than comparing apples to oranges. I think Ubuntu is very well done, but its growth is limited by its demand. We have a great linux desktop, its just that no one wants one. They're overserved with Windows and OSX. Unless they have some extreme motivator - ideology, want to play with something new, run a server, etc then they won't even bother. Honestly, its basic economics. Ubuntu is probably doing as well as possible considering the low demand for linux workstations.
Then pay for business service. I have AT&T business DSL and Comcat's business and outbound 25 is not blocked nor am I blacklisted. The problem is that people refuse to pay for proper business service and then whine and whine about caps and blocks from their cheap residential plans.
This is an excellent point. I love Chrome but the UI has me scatching my head sometimes. One some of my computers there is no bookmarks bar and on others there. To make things worse one of my Chrome installs keeps displaying "For quick access, place your bookmarks here or Import' text. Not sure if that will ever go away. Worse, if I click on "other bookmarks" which really should just be "bookmarks" there is no place to add bookmarks, instead I need to click on the star in the URL box. That's not intuitive for Joe and Jane computer user.
Now try using it with remote desktop and the RDP bar covers the title bar. Its just annoying. Yes, I can work around it, but its still a bad design decision. Title bars shouldn't be used in this way. Heck Im not even certain why the tab length on top is so short. I need to mouse over to see the entire title.
I would love to see it default to a Firefox-like classic mode and leave a minamalist option for those who want it. I'm still not sure why they removed the http from the URL box. Now its difficult for support people to ask end users "Are you visiting the http or https version." Instead they now need to ask what browser you are using because Chrome broke a very basic UI.
I'm not sure what Google's plan is here. Chrome feels like this browser run by two departments. The guys interested in building a secure and fast browser and guys interested in fucking up the UI to make it as hostile as possible in some attempt to achieve some minimalist nirvana.
I suspect a lot of people, myself included, will just go back to FF once the UI guys finally fuck it up for good. Shame really, technically its a great browser and sandoxing flash/pdf and a process per tab are great ideas.
Slashdot Mirror
>bring real news back.
I'm not going to defend this non-story, but slashdot has always been sensationalist garbage. Trolling pieces about MS or whoever is the socially acceptable IT devil today. Poorly researched opinion pieces, blogspam, and an editorial bias designed to get your goat, make you comment, and visit the site obsessively to reply to those who disagree with you.
This formula gets pageviews. Dispassionate accurate articles don't. There's a reason why so many successful news sites have this kind of editorial bias of serving up items that get people talking in some way (agreeing, being outraged, etc).
I think its unethical marketing leading this craze. There's a whole lot of people out there that are just floundering at some crummy job, or never went to college, etc who see all these ads like "Be a game developer in 18 months!" or "Be a computer animator in 6 months!"
What they don't understand is that going from having zero programming experience to hacking C++ takes a lot longer than 18 months at a diploma mill. The materials are hard because the subject is hard. Even dumbed down a lot of these people fail because it turns out that these non-traditional students are crappy students in general.
I see this shit pretty often on tech sites with "Full Sail University" ads. Yet another expensive "private university" that markets directly to the general public with promises that I'm skeptical work out in the real world. 21 month Bachelor's in Software Dev/Game dev/Animation/Graphic Design? Right.
We are constantly dismiss non-probably events like invisible leprechauns hidden in the server room. Yet when it comes to your "invisible dad in the sky who gives eternal life" suddenly we're all concerned about the possibility. Biased much? Humans use a mechanism like Occam's razor constantly and its philosophically defensible.
Its very, very, very likely that the magical beings described in 1st century Jewish writings aren't real. The same way its very, very likely that Gandalf doesn't exist.
God does not exist because you can't prove it and the ONUS OF PROOF IS ON YOU. You're making an extraordianry claim with ZERO EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE. Everytime we look into the validity of miracles or other religious claims we see nothing but falsehoods. Get over it. If you accept god(s), then you must accept all fictional beings including Gandalf and Arthur Dent.
Not to mention prior art. This Phillip K. Dick robot is both bearded and non-Japanese:
http://chicagoist.com/2005/06/24/now_seriously_android_do_you_dream_of_electric_sheep.php
According to some research released by Brian Krebs, most exploits are Java based. Other research suggests that something like 70% of PCs have critical remotely exploitable conditions (plugins in browsers mostly.)
If infections fell recently its probably because companies like MS, AVG, etc are doing a better job catching catching malware before it infects people. Joe User doesn't understand that he needs to also update his Java and his Adobe products.
> More positive than they had before
To be fair to MS, the Kinect did not employ any dirty tricks to keep it from being used on other equipment. If you read the blogs of the guys who built the first drivers, they reported none of the usual encryption tricks others like Sony and Nintendo are always using. Perhaps there's an argument about Japanese society's take on consumer rights/hacking, as these concepts are very Western or even explicitly American.
The only protectionism of the Kinect is see is that it does some crypto when talking to an Xbox. This exists so that competitors cannot build shoddy versions of the Kinect for the Xbox. Using the Kinect on other equipment seems to be hacker friendly, or at least, not explicitly anti-hacker.
Again, so what? This is a public discussion board and as such I can go on any tangent I like. Your pedantic rules absolutely do not apply. Unclench dude, you'll live longer.
So what? Most Windows infections are either trojans or exploit non-updated Java installs. We're not seeing any IE exploits lately or Silverlight or anything. Its trojans, Java, and Adobe Reader in order of vectors.
At the end of the day, the guy with administrator privs on the machine dictates how secure it is. If Ubuntu suddenly got 90% marketshare, it would be a malware nightmare just like Windows.
I have three zinos with blu-ray. I'm not sure what you're getting at.
Obsolete technology? Its called EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE. We're not buying 100 new projectors because Steve Jobs doesn't like VGA connectors.
> Only fanbois and haters try that kind of lame arguments
I must be a fanboy because I like doing embedded programming that sometimes requires a serial port. If anyone is a mindless fanboy its you.
Err, Apple also brought us the one button mouse, fought USB as long as it could, and everytime I go to a meeting someone yells "anyone got a displayport adapter to vga so I can use this projector?" Not to mention some of us still need serial ports on our computers, but I guess that's beside the point.
Not to mention PC makers have had the option to not install the floppy years before Apple mandated it. That AMD really brought us into the 64 bit era, and that wifi was not at all an Apple thing. Or that I can buy a Dell Zino that does HDMI and Bluray for half the price of a Mac mini.
Look, relax, theyre just a company. They're not some perfect religion. Comments like yours just justify the Apple fanboy stereotype. Unclench, everything will be ok. Jobs is still alive and a massive millionaire.
>these are people who really shouldn't be allowed to operate equipment more complicated than an adjustable 3 hole punch.
Fine, but we shouldn't make site-wide policies based on the stupidity of the worst of the worst. Thats the real problem here. Because you have one moron, that doesnt mean you need to punish the other users with stupid UI decisions like "Oh, lets get rid of the recycling bin for all because Jane can't figure it out."
Any competent admin would be able to retrieve those deleted files and professionally explain how to properly use the bin. A short-sighted socially-inept nerdy/otaku-type would immediately hide it for all users. Its passive aggressive, wrong, and stupid.
Thank you for this. Unfortunately, Slashdot has become a haven for the OCD weirdo otaku guys who completely lose their shit when someone uses a computer in a way they don't approve. "OMG GET RID OF WIN7 AND PUT UBUNTU ON THERE. HERE ARE MY FAVORITE DESKTOPS IN ORDER OF PREFERENCE!!" or "OMG YOU USE CHROME?? SWITCH TO MONKEYBIRDFOX BETA .3!!!!" This kind of thing is just another form of hipsterism. Most geeks outgrow it, some don't.
I find that Jr. admins and people new to IT have this kind of fascist mentality. Instead of learning why something works or how their average user interacts with it, they just start mandating changes that they like and tell everyone to take a hike. Everyday users appreciate the recycling bin. I'm not even sure why this is a "Windows thing" when both Ubuntu and OSX offer the exact same functionality. Unfortunately, technology attracts a lot of socially inept fanboy types.
If anything, in my experience, the recycling bin should be expanded on to work more like Time Machine and by default have it store files deleted from network shares. End users are constantly making mistakes and the more users you have to support the more mistakes will appear. This is exactly why things like the bin make sense.
The secretary story is silly. You shouldnt change policy for all because of one edge case. That's like disabling right-click because someone had a senior moment and pressed the wrong button.
Yeah we need more loud-mouth self serving businessmen doing asshole tactics to just make a buck. Oh, you thought he was trying to start a charity? How cute.
Does it? I almost never use the keyboard on my Vibrant to send text messages. I just speak into it and it does a surprisingly good job.
Now that I'm so used to doing speech to text, using a mouse or a little keyboard on my htpc is incredibly annoying. I really should be able to talk into my remote and say stuff like "play this video." Or navigate by just saying "down, down, play."
Speech for the PC could be similar. RIght now I'm doing this with my kinect, so we're halfway there.
Assange signature condoms and the "I fled Sweden and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" shirts. I did find the "Let loose this cable" boxer shorts and "I'm probably going to fry" chef aprons to be a bit distasteful.
Not exactly. It looks like a competitor to the Overdrive system many libraries use. Overdrive is a sharepoint-like portal that delivers DRM'd ebooks (usually PDFs) to library patrons. Its kinda kludgy but popular and the defacto standard for this kind of thing.
Gutenburg is only public domain books, this system would deliver purchased ebooks and most likely apply its own DRM like Adobe's PDF DRM. If it didn't use DRM the library using it would most likely get in some kind of trouble.
Oh well, anything that competes with Overdrive is good with me.
The last four digits don't. Its the first 5 that can be translated into location.
My understanding is that if I knew your place of birth/hometown I could figure out the first five (or work it down to a small set) and just append the last four and have your social.
Storing socials is pretty crazy nowadays. Even Walgreens has stopped doing this. They do what hospitals do use a primary key of Lastname + birthdate, and the verify secondly with address or first name. Its not perfect but your number of collisions is low and that information isn't getting an identity thief much, especially compared to a social.
That is not a typical task and malware isn't the problem it used to be. Enabling automatic updates and running a basic free AV like MSE works wonders.
Not to mention deriding windows as not having remote capabilities is being silly. Remote Assistance in built in not to mention free services like logmein, gotomypc, etc. On top of it, if you want to get cute you can install an ssh daemon/cygwin and powershell and have the cli coolness you like.
>I just logged into your machine using ssh and made the change from here..
In other words you need a dedicated linux sysadmin to do basic tasks for you that you can do in Windows with right-clicking. Windows is far from perfect but lets face it, you need to get in the command line to do anything useful with any linux desktop.
Regardless, I actually like Ubuntu because it lets me do things cheaply/free that I don't want to pay for, namely run various services. I am absolutely not interested in running it as a desktop and the idea that there's an overwhelming demand for Linux workstations is silly. Ubuntu has probably maxed out the real demand for Linux workstations, many of which are cases like yours where you force it on a relative and then play sysadmin and pat yourself on the back. Seems a little odd that its only feasible if you have someone in your family who is very familiar with supporting linux workstations.
>You can change the button_layout string to reflect that ordering
"Grandma, quit calling me, just change the button_layout string with vi. Sheez. No lets do it the easy way, type menu:maximize,minimize,close in the earlier box."
Yeah, I wonder why Ubuntu isn't at 99% marketshre.
XP is an 11 year old operating system. Are you really comparing it to the latest version of Ubuntu? No one is buying Norton, everyone is using Security Essentials for free.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make other than comparing apples to oranges. I think Ubuntu is very well done, but its growth is limited by its demand. We have a great linux desktop, its just that no one wants one. They're overserved with Windows and OSX. Unless they have some extreme motivator - ideology, want to play with something new, run a server, etc then they won't even bother. Honestly, its basic economics. Ubuntu is probably doing as well as possible considering the low demand for linux workstations.
I love how the default in your head is this anti-MS fantasy, yet what he describes is more or less the very real Apple app store.
Then pay for business service. I have AT&T business DSL and Comcat's business and outbound 25 is not blocked nor am I blacklisted. The problem is that people refuse to pay for proper business service and then whine and whine about caps and blocks from their cheap residential plans.
This is an excellent point. I love Chrome but the UI has me scatching my head sometimes. One some of my computers there is no bookmarks bar and on others there. To make things worse one of my Chrome installs keeps displaying "For quick access, place your bookmarks here or Import' text. Not sure if that will ever go away. Worse, if I click on "other bookmarks" which really should just be "bookmarks" there is no place to add bookmarks, instead I need to click on the star in the URL box. That's not intuitive for Joe and Jane computer user.
Now try using it with remote desktop and the RDP bar covers the title bar. Its just annoying. Yes, I can work around it, but its still a bad design decision. Title bars shouldn't be used in this way. Heck Im not even certain why the tab length on top is so short. I need to mouse over to see the entire title.
I would love to see it default to a Firefox-like classic mode and leave a minamalist option for those who want it. I'm still not sure why they removed the http from the URL box. Now its difficult for support people to ask end users "Are you visiting the http or https version." Instead they now need to ask what browser you are using because Chrome broke a very basic UI.
I'm not sure what Google's plan is here. Chrome feels like this browser run by two departments. The guys interested in building a secure and fast browser and guys interested in fucking up the UI to make it as hostile as possible in some attempt to achieve some minimalist nirvana.
I suspect a lot of people, myself included, will just go back to FF once the UI guys finally fuck it up for good. Shame really, technically its a great browser and sandoxing flash/pdf and a process per tab are great ideas.