It is unique because while one guy might act this way (finding a bug and stopping), there are potentially millions of others still looking for bugs. For commercial software, the few guys who might be looking for bugs will find them, get busy fixing them, then have to move on with adding features or something to keep the commercial product viable.
.
So actually, the point that you are implying (commercial software is better than OSS) is pretty far off the mark.
"I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it."
That seems to imply that you're only a first time user/of that version of office/. And if that's true, then you had a hard time with it because you are probably used to the old interface, or the interfaces of similar programs. The ribbon is made to be easy to use for people who have *never used Office before*. And if you think no one is in that boat, take a look at your kids.
The fact is that the ribbon IS a much better interface than menus, and exposes options and settings that are easy to reach and understand. The ribbon is a GUI revelation, and anyone who says different is just afraid of change.
Some of us don't enjoy having our data spread out all over the place on multiple systems with multiple drives. I don't want to have to worry about if I'm going to want some file while I'm traveling, so why not just take everything? That's what these allow people to do.
Wow, I can't believe how badly the "MS Windows" "remote access" model has polluted your point of view. X was created and exists for exactly the reason that you can have 1 application running on a big, fast, central server and the display shows up on your local/slow machine. This allows a huge benefit in pooling of resources and management.
When MS Windows had VNC, and finally Remote Desktop, the model was completely backward. You had to connect to the whole local screen and had to see the whole desktop. This makes it virtually impossible to actually *use* the apps on the remote side. As you have noted, the only good use for it is troubleshooting something when you don't have local access. Citrix is a hack on top of that to give the appearance of single application remote access.
So the X model is meant to actually be useful in day to day applications, while the MS model is only useful for troubleshooting or screensharing, and you're complaining that X is broken? You only think that because you don't know a world where things actually work well.
You've fundamentally missed the point. It's not about public vs. private, it's about placing the notice in a place that general citizens would have a reasonable chance of running across it in daily life. Unless your (and everyone's) daily web surfing involves checking government web sites every day, you're not going to see these notices. Even if *your* habits might bring you across it, 99.9% of other people won't. The point of having it in the newspaper is that most people (in the past) would be reading the paper for other reasons, and then just happen to stumble across the notice. THAT is the point.
Vista has no such concept of OEM vs. Retail disks. All Vista discs are the same, and it will also be the same with W7. Some OEMs distribute modified disks that auto-install with a specific license key, but those can be easily modified to remove that behavior. Any Vista disc that prompts you to enter a key will work with an OEM or Retail license key.
Microsoft knew this a long time ago. That's why they are where they are today... everywhere. You don't need something that's perfect and awesome, you just need something good enough so people can get by. The cost savings you get by not putting tons of effort into perfection can be passed on to consumers, who almost always buy on price alone.
Not everyone is a packrat. One could easily download stuff (presumably video), watch it, then delete it. You only need the storage before you watch it.
Because: 1) the quality of skype calls is far better than that of a phone call 2) skype to skype calls are free, and skype to outside phones is really really cheap 3) many people prefer to use skype because it is so much cheaper, and as a result do not have a regular phone or choose not to use it 4) Calls using Skype don't use up your cell phone minutes... I'm sure i could go on..
Instead of spending $$$ on bondage and discipline, how about treating your users like adult human beings?
THIS is why those tools don't exist. Because every time you ask, some self-righteous idealist responds like this. Unfortunately, those self-righteous idealists are often also the really good programmers who have the ability to create such tools.
No, a "hearty belly laugh" is not the only response.. in fact it's a really stupid one. All you manage to do is act like your better than everyone else without actually proving it. If you're that much smarter, you should be able to come up with a much better reason.
Any company that is worried about security also probably gets audited from time to time. With this in mind, it's easy to make a *real* argument against these tactics (not the impotent "just laugh at them" arguments the rest of the posters here seem to favor). You simply explain to them that open source code is constantly getting audited, and can be audited by anyone and everyone who wants it. Companies inherently understand why audits are needed and what their purpose is. It's the same for open source software.
I've used both truecrypt and compusec, and for a corporate environment only compusec is acceptable. Truecrypt does not provide a master password you can use to quickly reset a password when the user forgets. Compusec is not perfect, but this single feature makes it "enterprise" ready.
If you have enough money to get a computer and post to slashdot, then you should not be getting a coupon and certainly should not be trying for another one. People like you are the reason they ran out of money. The program was intended to help people who *couldn't otherwise afford* the upgrade. For the rest of us, $60 is hardly a stretch.
No, it's a negotiating tactic. First of all, they want to provide you an Internet connection so you have to pay for it, but they don't want you to use it because that costs them money.
The real reason is because it will be the Viacom channels losing revenue because the commercials they carry will no longer be reaching as many viewers. You can bet that Time Warner will be using that fact at the negotiating table.
The lesson here is that you don't ask something stupid like, "is the printer on?" because it makes the person feel stupid. You should ask them to turn it off then on again, and at that point they will notice it was already off and then turn it on.
Nothing went wrong... CAN-SPAM was not meant to stop spam, and suggesting otherwise is irresponsible. It was meant to bring accountability to spam operations operating in the USA, which it did. Because of that, almost all of the "legal" email marketers out there are now out of business, and what we have today are almost all illegal spammers.
Your problem is that you actually care about this company. Yes, you've been there for a long time and put in a lot of time, but once you give your notice, that's the end. Let them do whatever they want and enjoy your long lunches for the next month.
There's like what, 600 replies to this and almost every one of them talks about writing something yourself (python), or pointing to some type of library (sqlite). You people are total ignoramuses.
It's an all-in-one GUI frontend to sqlite files, and gives you a decent GUI to work within.
Seriously, the more I see tech people try to offer their help, the more I realize why tech people get paid mostly crap and get no respect from managers, businesspeople, or anyone else.
This is a privacy bug because it removes the ability of people to clear their history while still retaining sessions, and therefor people will disable clearing of history altogether.
Even though this is a joke, everyone gets up in arms about stuff like this. There's a simple solution, and it's what makes capitalism so good, the free market. If you don't like it, don't buy it, simple as that! Will you really miss out on that much in life if you don't see some movie or hear some CD? (You'll probably miss out on less in life if you don't watch movies!)
As long as everyone does the same thing you do, there's no problem, right? The problem is that on a server, disk space is still very expensive. a 36 gig scsi drive is still a lot, and 1 or 2 extra G for swap is a pretty big chunk.
This fuel cell thing sounds nice on the surface, but do you think for one minute you'll be able to buy any old can of fuel at the store and plug it in? Not a chance. Every company wants recurring revenue, and the idea that Dell will be able to sell you fuel for the lifetime of the laptop is too good to pass up (for them).
Mark my words, we will see Staples full of fuel tanks for every different laptop, right next to all the ink tanks for printers.
Corporate IT depts should really create two categories of RDBMS systems, vital and casual. The vital ones being the core business operations and casual being everything else.
This will never work. Any department or application that falls into the "casual" category will and should be cancelled. If you're doing something in the business that's not critical to the business, you are wasting resources on it. Even if you don't agree with that, managers understand this and they will brand every application as vital.
Slashdot Mirror
It is unique because while one guy might act this way (finding a bug and stopping), there are potentially millions of others still looking for bugs. For commercial software, the few guys who might be looking for bugs will find them, get busy fixing them, then have to move on with adding features or something to keep the commercial product viable.
.
So actually, the point that you are implying (commercial software is better than OSS) is pretty far off the mark.
"I just had to use a version of Office with the ribbon for the first time a few weeks ago, and I had a hard time with it."
That seems to imply that you're only a first time user /of that version of office/. And if that's true, then you had a hard time with it because you are probably used to the old interface, or the interfaces of similar programs. The ribbon is made to be easy to use for people who have *never used Office before*. And if you think no one is in that boat, take a look at your kids.
The fact is that the ribbon IS a much better interface than menus, and exposes options and settings that are easy to reach and understand. The ribbon is a GUI revelation, and anyone who says different is just afraid of change.
Some of us don't enjoy having our data spread out all over the place on multiple systems with multiple drives. I don't want to have to worry about if I'm going to want some file while I'm traveling, so why not just take everything? That's what these allow people to do.
Wow, I can't believe how badly the "MS Windows" "remote access" model has polluted your point of view. X was created and exists for exactly the reason that you can have 1 application running on a big, fast, central server and the display shows up on your local/slow machine. This allows a huge benefit in pooling of resources and management.
When MS Windows had VNC, and finally Remote Desktop, the model was completely backward. You had to connect to the whole local screen and had to see the whole desktop. This makes it virtually impossible to actually *use* the apps on the remote side. As you have noted, the only good use for it is troubleshooting something when you don't have local access. Citrix is a hack on top of that to give the appearance of single application remote access.
So the X model is meant to actually be useful in day to day applications, while the MS model is only useful for troubleshooting or screensharing, and you're complaining that X is broken? You only think that because you don't know a world where things actually work well.
You've fundamentally missed the point. It's not about public vs. private, it's about placing the notice in a place that general citizens would have a reasonable chance of running across it in daily life. Unless your (and everyone's) daily web surfing involves checking government web sites every day, you're not going to see these notices. Even if *your* habits might bring you across it, 99.9% of other people won't. The point of having it in the newspaper is that most people (in the past) would be reading the paper for other reasons, and then just happen to stumble across the notice. THAT is the point.
Vista has no such concept of OEM vs. Retail disks. All Vista discs are the same, and it will also be the same with W7. Some OEMs distribute modified disks that auto-install with a specific license key, but those can be easily modified to remove that behavior. Any Vista disc that prompts you to enter a key will work with an OEM or Retail license key.
Microsoft knew this a long time ago. That's why they are where they are today... everywhere. You don't need something that's perfect and awesome, you just need something good enough so people can get by. The cost savings you get by not putting tons of effort into perfection can be passed on to consumers, who almost always buy on price alone.
Not everyone is a packrat. One could easily download stuff (presumably video), watch it, then delete it. You only need the storage before you watch it.
Because: ... I'm sure i could go on..
1) the quality of skype calls is far better than that of a phone call
2) skype to skype calls are free, and skype to outside phones is really really cheap
3) many people prefer to use skype because it is so much cheaper, and as a result do not have a regular phone or choose not to use it
4) Calls using Skype don't use up your cell phone minutes
Instead of spending $$$ on bondage and discipline, how about treating your users like adult human beings?
THIS is why those tools don't exist. Because every time you ask, some self-righteous idealist responds like this. Unfortunately, those self-righteous idealists are often also the really good programmers who have the ability to create such tools.
No, a "hearty belly laugh" is not the only response.. in fact it's a really stupid one. All you manage to do is act like your better than everyone else without actually proving it. If you're that much smarter, you should be able to come up with a much better reason.
Any company that is worried about security also probably gets audited from time to time. With this in mind, it's easy to make a *real* argument against these tactics (not the impotent "just laugh at them" arguments the rest of the posters here seem to favor). You simply explain to them that open source code is constantly getting audited, and can be audited by anyone and everyone who wants it. Companies inherently understand why audits are needed and what their purpose is. It's the same for open source software.
I've used both truecrypt and compusec, and for a corporate environment only compusec is acceptable. Truecrypt does not provide a master password you can use to quickly reset a password when the user forgets. Compusec is not perfect, but this single feature makes it "enterprise" ready.
If you have enough money to get a computer and post to slashdot, then you should not be getting a coupon and certainly should not be trying for another one. People like you are the reason they ran out of money. The program was intended to help people who *couldn't otherwise afford* the upgrade. For the rest of us, $60 is hardly a stretch.
No, it's a negotiating tactic. First of all, they want to provide you an Internet connection so you have to pay for it, but they don't want you to use it because that costs them money.
The real reason is because it will be the Viacom channels losing revenue because the commercials they carry will no longer be reaching as many viewers. You can bet that Time Warner will be using that fact at the negotiating table.
The lesson here is that you don't ask something stupid like, "is the printer on?" because it makes the person feel stupid. You should ask them to turn it off then on again, and at that point they will notice it was already off and then turn it on.
Nothing went wrong... CAN-SPAM was not meant to stop spam, and suggesting otherwise is irresponsible. It was meant to bring accountability to spam operations operating in the USA, which it did. Because of that, almost all of the "legal" email marketers out there are now out of business, and what we have today are almost all illegal spammers.
Your problem is that you actually care about this company. Yes, you've been there for a long time and put in a lot of time, but once you give your notice, that's the end. Let them do whatever they want and enjoy your long lunches for the next month.
There's like what, 600 replies to this and almost every one of them talks about writing something yourself (python), or pointing to some type of library (sqlite). You people are total ignoramuses.
An APPLICATION that can do this, which USES the sqlite format, is "tkSQLite". http://reddog.s35.xrea.com/wiki/TkSQLite.html
It's an all-in-one GUI frontend to sqlite files, and gives you a decent GUI to work within.
Seriously, the more I see tech people try to offer their help, the more I realize why tech people get paid mostly crap and get no respect from managers, businesspeople, or anyone else.
Please try this and file a bug report:
1. Enable session saver (Options/Main/Startup: "When firefox starts": "show my windows and tabs from last time")
2a. Enable "clear private data on exit" (Options/Privacy/Private Data: Enable checkbox "Always clear private data when I close firefox")
2b. Click the "Settings" button and make sure "browsing history" is selected.
Now open a few tabs to different pages, then exit and restart firefox. What happens? All of your tabs from the last session are gone.
Expected behavior: history of past sites should be cleared, but the CURRENT sites that are open should not be.
Actual behavior: All history is cleared, as well as the tabs that were saved in the session.
Rationale: If the user doesn't want to have tabs re-opened when they start the browser, they can disable session saver.
This is a bug but because of incorrect logical thinking, it has been marked "wontfix". You can see the bug here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398817
This is a privacy bug because it removes the ability of people to clear their history while still retaining sessions, and therefor people will disable clearing of history altogether.
Even though this is a joke, everyone gets up in arms about stuff like this. There's a simple solution, and it's what makes capitalism so good, the free market. If you don't like it, don't buy it, simple as that! Will you really miss out on that much in life if you don't see some movie or hear some CD? (You'll probably miss out on less in life if you don't watch movies!)
Vote with your dollars and they'll hear you.
As long as everyone does the same thing you do, there's no problem, right? The problem is that on a server, disk space is still very expensive. a 36 gig scsi drive is still a lot, and 1 or 2 extra G for swap is a pretty big chunk.
This fuel cell thing sounds nice on the surface, but do you think for one minute you'll be able to buy any old can of fuel at the store and plug it in? Not a chance. Every company wants recurring revenue, and the idea that Dell will be able to sell you fuel for the lifetime of the laptop is too good to pass up (for them).
Mark my words, we will see Staples full of fuel tanks for every different laptop, right next to all the ink tanks for printers.
This will never work. Any department or application that falls into the "casual" category will and should be cancelled. If you're doing something in the business that's not critical to the business, you are wasting resources on it. Even if you don't agree with that, managers understand this and they will brand every application as vital.
Yes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. But if it keeps squeaking, it gets replaced.