...presupposing that people *do* have driver's licenses, or "SS#" as you call them. Doesn't leave much room for non-drivers, young people, or the small bit of the world that does not use SS#'s (ie. outside of the US).
I'm not saying this simply to bash you, just to say it needs more thought than that.
Yep, in Denmark (and a few other enlightened countries) citizens get free personal certificates from the state (certifikat.dk). And we have this digital mailbox thing (e-boks.dk) that we can use to receive "ex-paper" mail from just about anywhere (IRS, banks, telcos, etc.) in addition to being able to store a couple of hundred megs worth of personal files in a safe server.
I get to store my own identity token (with a fallback in case I lose it), and I trust the authority to authenticate me and others. All my personal email is signed with my certificate (and all my work email is signed with my employer's employee certificate).
Doesn't cost me a dime, and is as trustworthy as any web certificate can be.
I've never used yahoo's IM so I don't know its specifics, but it's simple, really.
Yahoo wants to control the clients that connect to their network, this is basically understandable. Most countries also have restrictions on the kind of phones you can sell and connect to the phone system (KTAS in Denmark, FCC in the US, etc).
Unlike the phone companies, Yahoo prefers to be the only vendor/supplier of clients for their service. I imagine this has to do with leveraging value-added branding (insert further buzzwords here), but it also has to do with data integrity -- they are allowing millions of user access to their servers, after all.
When Trillian, Gaim, and all the others "hack" into their servers, they not only help spread the word and the service, they also put Yahoo at risk because Yahoo doesn't trust these other vendors.
I would imagine the DMCE stick would already have been wielded if they could, so I guess they're just trying to harass and discourage the competition to leave their net....there you have it: as objective an explanation as I can offer.
I'll put up no argument against your point that the US is a huge place and naturally greater travel distances "go with the territory", so to speak. That's absolutely right; the roads in Sweden are generally far better than in the comparably small country of Denmark, where I live.
And of course (any teen)!=(any other teen). But generally speaking, I think an alarmingly high number of 16-year-olds [in Europe] are way too cocky to be trusted with a hunk of movable metal, and that's why I'm glad theyre "limited" to driving scooters and suchlike. I can't imagine things being all that different on your side of the pond, though I can understand your reasoning regarding law enforcement.
About driving in farming communities -- I think it's very common everywhere that kids are able to drive (if not actual cars, then at least car-like vehicles like tractors) from an early age. Actually, I think this is a great way of introducing youngsters to driving!:) You know, it's an environment without too much horse power and other traffic, but unfortunately this is not available for everybody.
Yup, in Sweden you can buy a magnetic sticker for you car (basically a "Learner" sticker) and then you can take your kid out into normal traffic and educate him yourself before he starts regular driving school.
Caveat #1: the youngster must be in the company of one of his parents who have full responsibility (as if the parent was in fact driving the vehicle).
Caveat #2: last I heard (which was a number of years ago) the youngster must be at least 17½ -- take into account here that outside of the US you have to be 18 to get a driver's license (which I think is rather a sane attitude).
Erm ... not saying you shouldn't, but ...
on
Old Toy Modding?
·
· Score: 1
...have you heard about "The Horror of Blimps"? If not, I suggest you read it before you go building anything. Yah.
Once I started using Mozilla (on Windows), tabbed browsing immediately "clicked" with me. You know, when things are so intuitive they become second nature in mere minutes. Same thing with middle-clicking of links to spawn new (background) tabs -- excellent!!! And it's very natural that you can also close tabs by the same means (i.e. right-clicking on the tab). This is how it works on Windows.
Alas, the same application performs differently on Linux, and for the longest time I couldn't figure it out. When I right-clicked a tab to close it, instead it started loading something -- I had no idea what.
And to those of you who say "just use CTRL-whatnot" -- well, that's at least TWO additional keyboard hits instead of a single mouse click (where I've already got my hand).
The simple-but-expert remedy is to add
user_pref("middlemouse.contentLoadURL", false);
to your "prefs.js" file (reference here (you gotta copy/paste the link, Bugzilla blocks referrals from Salshdot)). Sadly, it's a wontfix, so no hope of seeing this as an option in the GUI for regular users.
You state an appealing concept, for sure. Who wouldn't want to live in a society governed by "reasonable" laws (instead of mostly commercial ones)?
The fact of the matter is, I'm sure you'll find, that there are just too many facets to a population to make do with anything simple, and too many rotten tomatoes to make do without stringent prohibitions here, there and in between.
And, I don't think lawyers should be avoided at all costs, in spite of their common reputation -- there are also good lawyers you know.
There have been several suggestions on how to manage the physical side of it. Me, I just put it where I have room for it (and where the wife won't object).
The inventory management, though, is rather easy. Use a wiki! That's what I do. I have a drawer in my desk for all the small stuff (HD or smaller) and a big box in the attic. Then I use my family's TWiki site to maintain a table of what I have and where it might be -- along with a rather long list of who in and outside my family have which computers, and exactly what's in 'em. This is a good solution as long as you are certain that everyone who meddles with those computers also update the listing (and, sadly, nobody but myself is doing the meddling).
* Accessible from any networked computer: check. * Ability to add any number of notes and attachments: check. * Scalability in terms of users and inventory stock: check. * Ease of maintenance: Easy. * Ease of setup/installation: Moderate; easy if you know your way around a web server.
All I was saying was, we're discussing the UI side of an OS, and here's this distro that, while no doubt very nifty, use the Big No-No of web authoring smack on their front page. I just thought it was peculiar.
What I get by paying the same amount you do, is peace of mind.
Hehe, I'm a Dane too, and all I can say is -- beautifully said!
But why do you find it difficult to explain the healthcare system? That's easy! If you break a leg, you just go to the hospital without thinking you'd have to have insurance. If they find out you've got an inflamed appendix, they'll take care of that too -- free of charge. Oh by the way, this goes for foreigners too, to some extent.
Dental care? Well as long as you're under 18, school dental service will take care of you (no matter how much candy you gobble), but once you're an adult, you will have to pay for it.
If you want bigger (.)(.) or more lips or less belly, you'll have to pay for that yourself, since that's vanity, not health. But if you got burned in a fire or lost a limb, you can expect the system to step in and pay for a face job, glass eye, latex ear or plastic leg.
If you don't have a home however, you're in different luck. For some reason the gov't thinks it's okay to have all sorts of commercial offices built all over the place, and are only reluctantly putting up housing for students and "regular people" -- an average family can't afford an average house in the vicinity of the capital. Cars are expensive too, given the gov't puts about 180% (yes, that's one-hundred-and-eighty percent) taxes on top of the pice tag of a new car. But now I'm ranting -- I'm just meaning to say it's not all rosy-red over here.
Where I worked a few years ago, we had something called a 'friday meeting' the 1st friday of every month. A colleague of mine got severely ridiculed because he thought it wise to bring a pen and some paper for his first attendance --- which was about playing hockey in one of the empty studios. On other occasions we've been out go-carting, and even to a grand casino (complete with free pool-side buffet).
Sure this costs the company money, but they do get return value for it.
Recently I took a Lotus Notes certification (if you don't know, Notes is a database/mail application used by many large corporations). Some days later, I received the official certification documents in a big white envelope.
Now, across the flap of the envelope were the words "by breaking this seal you agree to the terms of the license agreement found within this envelope". Within. Yep.
Being a resourceful chap, I decided to cut up the side of the envelope, and indeed finding the promised license agreement along with my certification certificate.
I have emailed the person who signed the attached document entitled "Welcome to the Notes Professional family" (oooh how cosy), suggesting this is an odd situation to put new "family members" in. Apparently, however, her maternal feelings were not strong enough to compel her to reply.
Yeah NTFS is all the rage, but some of us (cough) still prefer the olde FAT32 format so we can use it from any OS (say DOS, for instance). Klaymen out.
I think I have just the thing for comparing old/new registry snapshots -- RegShot. It's free (as in beer).
You can make snapshots of certain points in time, and compare shots for differences. Unfortunately, the snapshots themselves are garbled (iow it's not standard.reg files), but otherwise it's a neat, simple, effective program.
I use this (and RegTick) to manage and lock down a bunch of computers at a youth center, and it's working quite nicely.
Umm, sorry AC, but I'm rather certain IBM TP's do not implement DRM in their BIOS. But if it's the ThinkPad Security Chip you're referring to, then you're wrong again -- there is preinstalled software to use it. I know so because a colleague of mine has tested it (on his T40). My TP (T23) doesn't have a security chip, nor would I think it necessary to use one.
Switzerland has some fairly colorful history regarding technology-related laws and reaction to things like spam.
Yeah, but not just tech laws. From what I read, way back you weren't even allowed to schleep your jewellery around (or was that own? I'm not sure). That, incidentally, is why these people took to another way of showing off your wealth and/or craftsmanship -- watchmaking.
...needless to say that Macs can read/write pc floppies, and that you can get Windows software allowing you to read/write Mac disks as well. So the ahrdware issue is perhaps not as big as you make it sound, but I won't argue about the crappiness of the controller. Or the floppy media, even.
Here is my argument, your leaving Microsoft, but why? I know there are these argument about them being a big evil corporation trying to stop free programming.
I don't know about the "trying to stop free programming" part, but the last two years or so I have seen a trend that the "megacorps" (to use a Shadowrun term) are scooping up any old patent they can come up with, and various other general paths of action (you read/. too, right). Plus, MS is effectively forcing people to upgrade constantly, and I'm simply sick of it. Since it's possible --but darn careless-- to stay on a Windows9x platform, and DOS/Win311 is out of the question, and all the newfangled Windows versions are so damned expensive yet quite apparently offer no security or hopes of forward compatibility anyway -- I've decided I'm done with the thing.
or why not try and sue open office for it's similarities, it seems to me they really aren't attacking the linux, or GNU community at all.
Well, they have taken out that xml patent that they might (might! IANAL) use to shut down OOo (or Mozilla, or...?). Plus, that bedeviled DMCA thingie could be used to end all forms of document portability (save for the GPL'ed formats, obviously).
If 20 well skilled programmers sat down there could be a linux virus, so why hasn't evil M$ sat down and had this done and released from somewhere else. Linux users are making said viruses against M$.
Are you trolling? I won't comment on this, other than saying that's a generalization the size of Jupiter.
Personally I think M$ is glad *nix is around, so that they don't get sued over anti trust every damn year.
Personally, I think the scope of the GNU philosophy is beginning to dawn upon Bill Gates, and he's not liking it. But what you and I think is irrelevant, we'll see which Road Ahead they choose.
So I am not saying linux is bad, linux is ok, but I think M$ as you guys call it, gets a bad rap.
You call it M$. I call it MS or Microsoft.
Post me links as to court cases M$ has lost where they were accused and found guilty of crushing a smaller software company, or stealing it's software, or illegally pushing people out of an industry. Links from viable websites please. I will read them, I swear, and with an open mind.
Ohh, The Java dispute? The IE integration dispute? DR-DOS compatibility? I'm sure you can find linkage on your own. They do this regularly, but not all of it reaches the US news. Mind you, it does happen the other way around too, though, for example with the recent embedded media suit against MS by a tiny company from somewhere.
But I think that mass beliefs in popular myths are dangerous, even if it's attacking a big corporation.
True, true. No matter how many people believe a lie/myth/religion, it's still a lie/not the truth/reality. But being worried about the general direction of the future of software is, I feel, a wise caution.
also please consider, M$ is in our country, helps our GDP, and employs thousands of highly paid programmers as well as donates millions to college IS departments that need the money.
Err, exqueeze me? Sure, MS does have a presence in our country, but that's like 25 people or so. Oh, I'm sorry -- you don't live in Denmark then?
Sorry for being a dork, but this is a very common generalisation/misconception --/. is read by many people all over the world, and while all the hoopla (MS lawsuits, DMCA, patenting frenzy, spam law-wannabes, etc) is raging in the US, there is a world outside. Yet sadly, whatever gets passed in the US has at least some impact on the rest of the planet. Fair? Naaw. To be expected? Well yeah I guess so, there are lots of you and so your economy is big. Scary? Hell yeah!
But you're right, The Gates foundation does a wonderful job, and it would be a huge loss to see it fold. But that
Slashdot Mirror
...presupposing that people *do* have driver's licenses, or "SS#" as you call them. Doesn't leave much room for non-drivers, young people, or the small bit of the world that does not use SS#'s (ie. outside of the US).
I'm not saying this simply to bash you, just to say it needs more thought than that.
Yep, in Denmark (and a few other enlightened countries) citizens get free personal certificates from the state (certifikat.dk). And we have this digital mailbox thing (e-boks.dk) that we can use to receive "ex-paper" mail from just about anywhere (IRS, banks, telcos, etc.) in addition to being able to store a couple of hundred megs worth of personal files in a safe server.
I get to store my own identity token (with a fallback in case I lose it), and I trust the authority to authenticate me and others. All my personal email is signed with my certificate (and all my work email is signed with my employer's employee certificate).
Doesn't cost me a dime, and is as trustworthy as any web certificate can be.
more than Helix Player will *ever* play (at least in the *near future*)
... you're funny. Sorry, but I just couldn't resist.
Heh
so maybe there's luck that an emigrated Yank could score a roll...
Why would you want to score a troll? Eh, what's that? Oh, nevermind then.
I've never used yahoo's IM so I don't know its specifics, but it's simple, really.
...there you have it: as objective an explanation as I can offer.
Yahoo wants to control the clients that connect to their network, this is basically understandable. Most countries also have restrictions on the kind of phones you can sell and connect to the phone system (KTAS in Denmark, FCC in the US, etc).
Unlike the phone companies, Yahoo prefers to be the only vendor/supplier of clients for their service. I imagine this has to do with leveraging value-added branding (insert further buzzwords here), but it also has to do with data integrity -- they are allowing millions of user access to their servers, after all.
When Trillian, Gaim, and all the others "hack" into their servers, they not only help spread the word and the service, they also put Yahoo at risk because Yahoo doesn't trust these other vendors.
I would imagine the DMCE stick would already have been wielded if they could, so I guess they're just trying to harass and discourage the competition to leave their net.
I'll put up no argument against your point that the US is a huge place and naturally greater travel distances "go with the territory", so to speak. That's absolutely right; the roads in Sweden are generally far better than in the comparably small country of Denmark, where I live.
:) You know, it's an environment without too much horse power and other traffic, but unfortunately this is not available for everybody.
And of course (any teen)!=(any other teen). But generally speaking, I think an alarmingly high number of 16-year-olds [in Europe] are way too cocky to be trusted with a hunk of movable metal, and that's why I'm glad theyre "limited" to driving scooters and suchlike. I can't imagine things being all that different on your side of the pond, though I can understand your reasoning regarding law enforcement.
About driving in farming communities -- I think it's very common everywhere that kids are able to drive (if not actual cars, then at least car-like vehicles like tractors) from an early age. Actually, I think this is a great way of introducing youngsters to driving!
Yup, in Sweden you can buy a magnetic sticker for you car (basically a "Learner" sticker) and then you can take your kid out into normal traffic and educate him yourself before he starts regular driving school.
Caveat #1: the youngster must be in the company of one of his parents who have full responsibility (as if the parent was in fact driving the vehicle).
Caveat #2: last I heard (which was a number of years ago) the youngster must be at least 17½ -- take into account here that outside of the US you have to be 18 to get a driver's license (which I think is rather a sane attitude).
...have you heard about "The Horror of Blimps"? If not, I suggest you read it before you go building anything. Yah.
"Me too!"
Once I started using Mozilla (on Windows), tabbed browsing immediately "clicked" with me. You know, when things are so intuitive they become second nature in mere minutes.
Same thing with middle-clicking of links to spawn new (background) tabs -- excellent!!! And it's very natural that you can also close tabs by the same means (i.e. right-clicking on the tab). This is how it works on Windows.
Alas, the same application performs differently on Linux, and for the longest time I couldn't figure it out. When I right-clicked a tab to close it, instead it started loading something -- I had no idea what.
And to those of you who say "just use CTRL-whatnot" -- well, that's at least TWO additional keyboard hits instead of a single mouse click (where I've already got my hand).
The simple-but-expert remedy is to add to your "prefs.js" file (reference here (you gotta copy/paste the link, Bugzilla blocks referrals from Salshdot)).
Sadly, it's a wontfix, so no hope of seeing this as an option in the GUI for regular users.
You state an appealing concept, for sure. Who wouldn't want to live in a society governed by "reasonable" laws (instead of mostly commercial ones)?
The fact of the matter is, I'm sure you'll find, that there are just too many facets to a population to make do with anything simple, and too many rotten tomatoes to make do without stringent prohibitions here, there and in between.
And, I don't think lawyers should be avoided at all costs, in spite of their common reputation -- there are also good lawyers you know.
Meanwhile, may I refer you thusly.
There have been several suggestions on how to manage the physical side of it. Me, I just put it where I have room for it (and where the wife won't object).
The inventory management, though, is rather easy. Use a wiki! That's what I do.
I have a drawer in my desk for all the small stuff (HD or smaller) and a big box in the attic. Then I use my family's TWiki site to maintain a table of what I have and where it might be -- along with a rather long list of who in and outside my family have which computers, and exactly what's in 'em. This is a good solution as long as you are certain that everyone who meddles with those computers also update the listing (and, sadly, nobody but myself is doing the meddling).
* Accessible from any networked computer: check.
* Ability to add any number of notes and attachments: check.
* Scalability in terms of users and inventory stock: check.
* Ease of maintenance: Easy.
* Ease of setup/installation: Moderate; easy if you know your way around a web server.
Anything I forgot?
Chill, man. No offense intended.
All I was saying was, we're discussing the UI side of an OS, and here's this distro that, while no doubt very nifty, use the Big No-No of web authoring smack on their front page. I just thought it was peculiar.
And yet ... they are using blinking text tags on thier web site. Egads!
...with the exception that Mozilla offers a (learning!)junk mail filter, Ximian does not.
... but you do need a Shockwave Director plugin.
What I get by paying the same amount you do, is peace of mind.
Hehe, I'm a Dane too, and all I can say is -- beautifully said!
But why do you find it difficult to explain the healthcare system? That's easy! If you break a leg, you just go to the hospital without thinking you'd have to have insurance. If they find out you've got an inflamed appendix, they'll take care of that too -- free of charge. Oh by the way, this goes for foreigners too, to some extent.
Dental care? Well as long as you're under 18, school dental service will take care of you (no matter how much candy you gobble), but once you're an adult, you will have to pay for it.
If you want bigger (.)(.) or more lips or less belly, you'll have to pay for that yourself, since that's vanity, not health. But if you got burned in a fire or lost a limb, you can expect the system to step in and pay for a face job, glass eye, latex ear or plastic leg.
If you don't have a home however, you're in different luck. For some reason the gov't thinks it's okay to have all sorts of commercial offices built all over the place, and are only reluctantly putting up housing for students and "regular people" -- an average family can't afford an average house in the vicinity of the capital. Cars are expensive too, given the gov't puts about 180% (yes, that's one-hundred-and-eighty percent) taxes on top of the pice tag of a new car. But now I'm ranting -- I'm just meaning to say it's not all rosy-red over here.
Some companies actively encourage it.
Where I worked a few years ago, we had something called a 'friday meeting' the 1st friday of every month. A colleague of mine got severely ridiculed because he thought it wise to bring a pen and some paper for his first attendance --- which was about playing hockey in one of the empty studios. On other occasions we've been out go-carting, and even to a grand casino (complete with free pool-side buffet).
Sure this costs the company money, but they do get return value for it.
Recently I took a Lotus Notes certification (if you don't know, Notes is a database/mail application used by many large corporations). Some days later, I received the official certification documents in a big white envelope.
;-)
Now, across the flap of the envelope were the words "by breaking this seal you agree to the terms of the license agreement found within this envelope". Within. Yep.
Being a resourceful chap, I decided to cut up the side of the envelope, and indeed finding the promised license agreement along with my certification certificate.
I have emailed the person who signed the attached document entitled "Welcome to the Notes Professional family" (oooh how cosy), suggesting this is an odd situation to put new "family members" in. Apparently, however, her maternal feelings were not strong enough to compel her to reply.
Good thing I didn't break that seal!
I can hardly believe somebody could seriously sugest this.
Well, I can -- and I think it's an excellent idea. At least in theory -- in practice, I agree with the rest of your post.
Sigh!
Yeah NTFS is all the rage, but some of us (cough) still prefer the olde FAT32 format so we can use it from any OS (say DOS, for instance). Klaymen out.
I think I have just the thing for comparing old/new registry snapshots -- RegShot. .reg files), but otherwise it's a neat, simple, effective program.
It's free (as in beer).
You can make snapshots of certain points in time, and compare shots for differences. Unfortunately, the snapshots themselves are garbled (iow it's not standard
I use this (and RegTick) to manage and lock down a bunch of computers at a youth center, and it's working quite nicely.
Umm, sorry AC, but I'm rather certain IBM TP's do not implement DRM in their BIOS.
But if it's the ThinkPad Security Chip you're referring to, then you're wrong again -- there is preinstalled software to use it. I know so because a colleague of mine has tested it (on his T40).
My TP (T23) doesn't have a security chip, nor would I think it necessary to use one.
But DRM? I'm quite certain they don't have that.
Switzerland has some fairly colorful history regarding technology-related laws and reaction to things like spam.
Yeah, but not just tech laws. From what I read, way back you weren't even allowed to schleep your jewellery around (or was that own? I'm not sure). That, incidentally, is why these people took to another way of showing off your wealth and/or craftsmanship -- watchmaking.
Disclaimer: Or so I've read.
...needless to say that Macs can read/write pc floppies, and that you can get Windows software allowing you to read/write Mac disks as well. So the ahrdware issue is perhaps not as big as you make it sound, but I won't argue about the crappiness of the controller. Or the floppy media, even.
Here is my argument, your leaving Microsoft, but why? I know there are these argument about them being a big evil corporation trying to stop free programming.
/. too, right). Plus, MS is effectively forcing people to upgrade constantly, and I'm simply sick of it. Since it's possible --but darn careless-- to stay on a Windows9x platform, and DOS/Win311 is out of the question, and all the newfangled Windows versions are so damned expensive yet quite apparently offer no security or hopes of forward compatibility anyway -- I've decided I'm done with the thing.
...?). Plus, that bedeviled DMCA thingie could be used to end all forms of document portability (save for the GPL'ed formats, obviously).
/. is read by many people all over the world, and while all the hoopla (MS lawsuits, DMCA, patenting frenzy, spam law-wannabes, etc) is raging in the US, there is a world outside. Yet sadly, whatever gets passed in the US has at least some impact on the rest of the planet. Fair? Naaw. To be expected? Well yeah I guess so, there are lots of you and so your economy is big. Scary? Hell yeah!
I don't know about the "trying to stop free programming" part, but the last two years or so I have seen a trend that the "megacorps" (to use a Shadowrun term) are scooping up any old patent they can come up with, and various other general paths of action (you read
or why not try and sue open office for it's similarities, it seems to me they really aren't attacking the linux, or GNU community at all.
Well, they have taken out that xml patent that they might (might! IANAL) use to shut down OOo (or Mozilla, or
If 20 well skilled programmers sat down there could be a linux virus, so why hasn't evil M$ sat down and had this done and released from somewhere else. Linux users are making said viruses against M$.
Are you trolling? I won't comment on this, other than saying that's a generalization the size of Jupiter.
Personally I think M$ is glad *nix is around, so that they don't get sued over anti trust every damn year.
Personally, I think the scope of the GNU philosophy is beginning to dawn upon Bill Gates, and he's not liking it. But what you and I think is irrelevant, we'll see which Road Ahead they choose.
So I am not saying linux is bad, linux is ok, but I think M$ as you guys call it, gets a bad rap.
You call it M$. I call it MS or Microsoft.
Post me links as to court cases M$ has lost where they were accused and found guilty of crushing a smaller software company, or stealing it's software, or illegally pushing people out of an industry. Links from viable websites please. I will read them, I swear, and with an open mind.
Ohh, The Java dispute? The IE integration dispute? DR-DOS compatibility? I'm sure you can find linkage on your own. They do this regularly, but not all of it reaches the US news. Mind you, it does happen the other way around too, though, for example with the recent embedded media suit against MS by a tiny company from somewhere.
But I think that mass beliefs in popular myths are dangerous, even if it's attacking a big corporation.
True, true. No matter how many people believe a lie/myth/religion, it's still a lie/not the truth/reality. But being worried about the general direction of the future of software is, I feel, a wise caution.
also please consider, M$ is in our country, helps our GDP, and employs thousands of highly paid programmers as well as donates millions to college IS departments that need the money.
Err, exqueeze me? Sure, MS does have a presence in our country, but that's like 25 people or so. Oh, I'm sorry -- you don't live in Denmark then?
Sorry for being a dork, but this is a very common generalisation/misconception --
But you're right, The Gates foundation does a wonderful job, and it would be a huge loss to see it fold. But that