......but wouldn't provide any way to save files to any convenient place....
In the Firefox preferences the user can designate a folder where downloads can be saved. This can be any directory or disk, including network that the user has write access to. All other settings, cookies etc. are saved in the user's library.
Little snitch works as part of the system preferences. To disable it the malware would have to gain write access to a part of the system. If the user is an admin, that would likely work, but otherwise not.
In any computer system, if the user knows the admin password and gives it, there is not much that can be done about it. In Windows, since the user is FORCED to run as admin because many programs do not run properly or at all otherwise, a password is not even asked for, possibly arousing the suspicion of a reasonably astute user.
The test account is a limited account that contains nothing that I would not be willing to post on the Internet. I NEVER give the admin password when running under the test account. There is NO reason for any program, (other than hardware drivers) in order to install or run, to need write access to system areas. So yes, a malware could write a lot of crap in the test account and fill up the disk and then cause system difficulties or even a crash.
The present server version of OSX does contain an access control list facility with a nice interface that allows finer control of permissions. The consumer version lacks the interface and must be set up manually through the terminal command line. Maybe Apple will make this interface available to everyone in the next version of OSX.
....Therefore nuclear weaponry is a joke unless you belong to a terrorist organization that does not care about what others think of you......
When a nation thinks is is about to be exterminated and has nothing to lose by lobbing nukes at their tormentors, nukes will fly. Then what was written in the ancient prophecy will come true:
Isaiah 17:1 Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Damascus is one of the oldest, if not the oldest continually inhabited city on this planet. It has never been destroyed in all the wars that have swirled around it throughout the centuries. If Syria, allied with Iran threatens Israel with extermination and tries to make good on this threat, Damascus will be one of the first places to get nuked by a desperate Israel.
......Hardly a stretch to consider that they, too, have legitimate defense needs.......
Hitler also had legitimate defense needs. It took his invasion of another country to galvanize the world against him. Hitler's 'needs' were the more traditional reasons for war. Iran's government is controlled by a religious group whose leaders want to wipe Israel from the map. They have this in common with Hitler. So far in human history, there have been three attempts to eradicate the Jews from this planet and they have all failed. There will be at least one more attempt, called the war of Armageddon. This too is doomed to failure because of the promises of God to the descendants of Abraham, Jews and Arabs alike. After that last attempt, these two semitic brothers, who have been at each other's throats all these long centuries, will be reconciled and live in peace forever. The peace between Israel and Egypt is a harbinger of this. All the oil will not negate the promise of the God of Abraham to these people groups.
....One possibility is to arrange for unmarked German fighter-bombers to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities.....
When Israel feels truly threatened by Iran, they will bomb Iran's nuclear capability into oblivion. The did it before in Iraq. When their survival is at stake, the UNSC could make 10,000 resolutions each day and Israel will still "do what is necessary" to reduce or eliminate the threat of Iran. Since their return from exile in 1948 they have taken care of their business pretty well. Israel is here to stay, even if every country in the whole world might wish otherwise. Both Jews and Arabs consider Abraham their ancestor. God made great promises to ALL of Abraham's descendants and these cannot be broken by Jews, Arabs nor other humans. Someday these two semitic brothers WILL live side by side in peace.
......BS. How does Firefox download files to the desktop?.....
The same way any other program does. Each user account has its own desktop file. A preference setting under "downloads" in the program allows the user to specify any directory or volume he/she has write access to. The desktop is nothing but another folder. Each user has their own desktop folder.
Any file that wants to execute for the first time on a Mac brings up a warning. If a user downloads a file that masquerades as a plain file but is really some code, this warning comes up. "Program qqqqq is attempting to execute for the first time, do you want to allow this?" The user may then cancel or allow the program to proceed.
In addition, I have a nifty program called "Little Snitch" watches for any attempted network connections and puts up a warning: " A program called xxxxx wants to connect on port yyy to address zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz " do you want this to be allowed? The user can then choose to deny, allow once or always allow hereafter.
These are two indicators that something fishy is going on. A quick mouse click and such a suspect file is trashed.
A further security feature of a Mac is the simple fact that programs don't mess with the system and splatter junk all over the HD and thus can be gotten rid of easily. 99% of Mac software doesn't come with an uninstaller and there is no such in the system. Simply drag the offending files to the trash. Since my test account doesn't have much of anything in it and it has no access to any other part of computer or network, finding crap is quite easy.
I sincerely hope (probably in vain) that VISTA will incorporate some of these simple security measures, since malware and spam affect everyone.
....hell, many installer apps require that anyway -- and thus wiping out my whole disk......
More and more Mac programs don't need an installer. Just drag them to the Application folder. You do need and admin password to do this. Once there, every Mac user has access to the program and can set their own preferences.
Mac OS 10.4 includes an access control list mechanism for finer grained permissions. The Server version includes a nice admin program for this, but the normal version needs terminal commands and some geeky knowledge.
Programs, such as Firefox have write access only to the user's library which contains that user's configs.
I always try new downloaded programs as a different user first, before I run them on my account which contains sensitive data. All user accounts, except for one special admin account are standard. The test account has no password and so guests can use my systems also. Fast user switching makes this setup a breeze to use. When exploring the unknown reaches of the Internet, I use the test account.
.......On the speed issue though, whilst my Mac (running 10.4.7) boots up pretty quickly to the login box (about 20 seconds), it takes an incredibly large amount of time to log in on a fairly clean installation (about a minute). There's a great deal of work left to be done on the speed front........
While it is nice to have quick boot and login times, it is not really all that critical. In combination with fast user switching and sleep, neither my old PB nor my more modern G5 get re-booted often. Once a week maybe, if that. Apps like web and mail, simple office jobs including Excel, music and even video playback are still quite acceptable on the old 550Mhz PB. Encoding media and fancy graphics are another story though! Some time next year I'll replace the old PB with a shiny new Macbook Pro running 10.5
....It is not really all that much more advanced above the original NeXTstep of 1989, in that it uses an essentially identical architecture....
That may be, but in general, greater complexity makes for slower performance. Apple has been able to work against this general trend, whereas MS has not. OS9 boots much faster than OSX on the old Powerbook, unless I try to start up a lot of third party extensions. Said extensions were a constant source of frustration and system crashes. OS9 apps run about the same, whether the Mac is booted in to OS9 or under under classic compatibility under OSX.
....Currently, applications can install themselves anywhere they want. They can destroy everything I own, including most things in the registry.....
That is mostly because they will only work properly when run under an admin account. Why does an OS need such a thing as a registry in the first place? OSX doesn't have one and Mac apps don't have indiscriminate access to the system nor hardware, especially if run under a standard non-admin privileged account. Many Mac apps don't even need am installer program. The user just drags the program folder from the installation CD or download image to any place they have write access. This can be a server on the LAN. Of course, any program can write anywhere a user has write permissions. For this reason I try doubtful software under a special limited "experiment" account. Another limited user account has the "filevault" encryption enabled for "private" stuff.
.....Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to start with a core operating system unit that could then have additional modules and applications bolted on as necessary'....
That is essentially what Apple has done. They started with some flavor of UNIX and then bolted on all the nifty features OSX now has. I still have a 550Mhz Titanium Powerbook which was announced in Jan 2001. I use this when I need a portable, rather than my 2Ghz G5. OSX 10.4.3 now running is considerably faster than the original 10.1, even though many new features have been added in the newer OS. It still has the 512MB RAM, but a bigger HD than what it had back then. Most of the HD space is filled with music.
MS Windows 98 runs fast thereon, Win 2000 runs is acceptable still on my old 800Mhz PC box, but XP is dog slow, so I put Win2K back on for an occasionally needed program. It seems that Windows NEEDS better hardware for each new generation, whereas the newer Mac OSX can still work reasonably well with older Macs.
....Right. And if people would quit sharing needles, engaging in dangerous activities, being mean to one another, and think only of the betterment of society much sickness, waste of tax money and other societal problems would be averted. Surely this is the society which all christians claim we should have.......
If there were such a country where everybody behaved as you suggest, I and many Americans and others would move there. Then you could take your chances with all the swingers, homo and bisexuals along with murderers, rapists, thieves, robbers and other mean and nasty people.
The first miracle Jesus did was to turn water into wine. Drinking alcohol as such is not proscribed, only getting drunk. God put alcohol and all sorts of substances here for us to use, but not to abuse. In ancient Israel there were all sorts of what we today would consider draconian laws against improper behavior, but interestingly, virtually NO laws against the mere possession of objects or substances. Today, 75% or more of prisoners, in the USA at least, directly or indirectly, are locked up because they were found to have something they are not supposed to have.
It is interesting that out of all religions you mention christianity. The kind of society you describe, one without crime, violence, rampant disease, hatred and war is what is prophesied in the Bible. It will come after mankind comes to the brink of extermination by the WMDs that have been and are being built. Messiah will come to Earth and avert the final and complete destruction of humanity and FORCE those few who survive to obey His rules. These will include the the ten commandments and the one man, one woman, one lifetime marriage law. The remaining inhabitants of this planet will understand that there are other intelligences in the universe and rebuild our ruined, crime infested world into a beautiful place, under the gentle, yet stern rule of Jesus the God-man.
It is well known that the best deterrence to *any* kind of lawbreaking is reduced by increasing the likelihood of getting caught, not the severity of the punishment. It will be a world where EVERY violator will be caught 100% of the time. Punishment in itself will not be severe, but sure. When you have a cop behind you, you don't do 60 in a 25mph zone. In that world, there will be no bad secrets. Anyone even thinking or planning to violate the just laws will be known and warned. People may still WANT to do wrong, but will know that there is no possibility of actually doing it without being called to account if they do it. If you harbor hatred in your mind, the object of that hate and everybody else will know it, as if it were written on your forehead with a black sharpie pen.
The basis of all laws will be: "Love your neighbor as yourself".
......And more importantly, you expect other people to deny themselves sexual gratification as well?.....
Of course not! Sex, like fire is good. Like fire, sex out of place is destructive. Find and marry a good woman. Keep her as your special treasure and she'll respond by giving you sexual pleasure.
....However, in this country it's not illegal to be a promiscuous fornicator......
It can however be dangerous to your health (STD) or your freedom. The safest rule is: "One man, one woman, one lifetime together in marriage" If this moral law were followed, much sickness, waste of tax money and other society problems would be averted. A man happily married is not likely to go to a bar to get drunk and get into fights.
.....78% of the US population lives in urban areas.....
Some of our so called urban areas are larger than some entire countries on the list. This especially true in west coast cities. The cost of many services is less, the more customers are available in a given area. A better comparison would to figure out how many miles of wire it takes to connect people to the Internet even in urban areas. For US urban areas it takes a lot more wires and repeaters to service that population than in European cities. This means more investment per customer in the US.
........."You will now get this and this dialog. This is normal, just hit ok."....
NO malware dialog can come up until the user gives OK to that warning. If the user doesn't click OK, nasty program cannot start. Also, in order to install programs, a user is asked for an admin password. There is NO way any program can install or run without user input; at least I have not heard of one. Unfortunately there is no protection for a dumb user in any OS. However, it is impossible to infect an out of the box Mac by simply connecting it directly to the Internet, firewall or no. All of the tiny amount of supposed Mac malware to date requires user action and the ignoring of warnings. Hackers would LOVE to have the bragging rights of having humiliated the admittedly and rightly smug Mac users by doing to Macs what is commonplace in the Windows environment. Maybe someday it will happen, but meanwhile I will not hold my breath.
I'm still reading articles of users connecting a Windows box to the Internet and getting infected before the needed patches can be downloaded and installed.
.... It certainly doesn't hinder worms and their ilk much. And don't get me started on that silly checksumming of applications....
Mac OSX has an interesting feature that should at least alert a user that something fishy is happening. Any executable trying to run the very first time, triggers a dialog that asks the user if that should be allowed. It adds the warning that the program could be malicious. Then the smart users may cancel the starting of that program.
....Lawyers don't produce anything the same as most people/jobs don't produce anything......
Since getting kicked out of paradise, a lot of jobs became necessary. Lawyers, doctors, law enforcers, repairers of broken stuff, exterminators, all militaries and more. If humans were truly good, this planet could be turned into a paradise by man. Meanwhile we are all burdened by the large effort required to keep evil from taking over and gaining the upper hand.
.....Yes you need a lot of power, but you do not need all that power in a single coherent beam.....
It is the average power needed to fill a reasonably large screen with an image of good brightness. Lasers only appear so bright because the spot can be focused very small. If that spot has to move rapidly to cover a large area, then the laser power is spread out over the whole area and the sensation of brightness to our eyes is small unless the power of the laser beam is high enough to burn a hole in things if it should ever stop moving.
Why is it that a normal projector using film, DLP or LCD technology needs such a powerful lamp? How can enough power to illuminate a large screen ever come from a battery operated device?
......A lot of people are simply afraid to drive there, so they don't.....
I guess you have not been in a German "STAU" (traffic jam). We came just two days after school let out for vacation in some of the German states and the Frankfurt AutoBahn was plugged up just as tight as LA or Seattle. Maybe some Americans are too chicken to drive in Germany, but other Europeans, such as from Scandinavia, where they do have limits similar to the USA don't seem to be. Many of them fly down the Autobahn to the sunny places in Italy.
Of course it requires much more skill to zoom along at 220-230Km/H than to dawdle along at a leisurely 90-100Km/h which is the speed limit for trucks. So any foreigner who is afraid or unable to pilot a car at jet take-off speed can just stay in line with the trucks in the right lane. There are columns of them many kilometers long. Driving a nice BMW or Mercedes at 200+ is a lot of fun actually, but rather strenuous for long. However, since Germany is smaller than Oregon, where we live, it is not necessary to spend all that much time behind the wheel in order to get places at such speeds. The 120km trip from where we are staying to the town where some of my ancestors are buried took only 45 minutes or so. We were zooming along pretty good in very sparse traffic, but there were still some cars passing us as if we were parked.
.....You realize that the posted speeds are "Km/H", right.....
Of course I do. I was talking about driving 230Km/H at times. That is still slow compared to the ICE trains, which is the way to go for people traveling alone. ICE goes past 300Km/H at times.
......MOST people simply CAN NOT HANDLE FASTER SPEEDS.....
BS to the highest degree! I am currently here in Germany (visiting) and most people drive insanely fast, and it's completely legal, especially on their freeways (Autobahn). Even though I am used to the snail paced speeds of the US, I have had no problem doing 140MPH along with the other traffic here. It's kind of fun to fly along like that, passing trucks as if they were parked. However, driving here is a full time job. Passengers, even by just talking to the driver when flying down the road at near takeoff speed of a jetliner, make for a dangerous, distracting situation. Sections of the Autobahn have posted limits, some of them indicated by electric signs sensitive to traffic and other safety considerations. Germans also drive faster on secondary and city roads that we would at home in similar situations. Posted limits on the roads are about equivalent, but fewer Germans pay attention to the posted limit.
I see no reason why, especially in the sparsely populated western states there should be general speed limits, especially on freeways. Post limits in metro areas, but let people drive at whatever speed they feel is safe for them. For some of such lonely stretches I have traveled, I have never seen a police patrol nor a driver pulled over.
....Merely observations that support a current theory.....
Current theory of the cause of the observed red shift needs the "dark" matter-energy to explain the motion of distant objects. If the red shift is NOT due to doppler effects, the dark stuff is not needed and would have never been dreamed up. All motion in the universe at large distances is controlled by gravity. So to explain the motion of distant objects it becomes necessary 1) to modify gravity itself or 2) postulate an unobserved source of additional gravity. To mess with a reliably tested law, like gravity is distasteful, so the second option was taken. If the cause of the red shift is something OTHER than the doppler effect, the distances and ages may not be what we think they are and the universe may no longer be expanding. Distant objects may not be moving away form us and each other at speeds that are a significant fraction of light speed.
Re:Blog First, Then Scientific Journals.
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Dark Matter Exists
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......But maybe we can get our hands on some dark matter.......
Why should dark matter or energy exist in the far reaches of the universe and not here? If these are not theoretical constructs based on faulty interpretation of observed data, then these "dark" entities should present some evidence of themselves right here in our back yard, rather than a few million or billion light years distant. I'll believe in the existence of dark matter if someone can bring evidence for it right here on earth.
Is the postulate of dark matter-energy not based ultimately on the common doppler interpretation of the red shift? If the red shift is caused by other phenomena, all that "dark" stuff may suddenly not be needed to explain certain galactic observations.
In all of nature, nothing is more 'constant' than change. Why is the assumption that certain relationships of time and space have always been what we have observe them today, hung on to so tenaciously?
We have only been observing these things scientifically for a few nanoseconds of the history of the universe. How do we know for example that the properties of "empty" space are the same today, as they were near the beginning of time? When the universe was small and dense, therefore, of necessity, space itself was also vastly different.
If the red shift is caused by a fundamental change in the properties of space itself, the size and age estimates of the universe may be vastly wrong. Dark stuff then is not needed at all to make sense of what we actually OBSERVE!
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......but wouldn't provide any way to save files to any convenient place....
In the Firefox preferences the user can designate a folder where downloads can be saved. This can be any directory or disk, including network that the user has write access to. All other settings, cookies etc. are saved in the user's library.
Little snitch works as part of the system preferences. To disable it the malware would have to gain write access to a part of the system. If the user is an admin, that would likely work, but otherwise not.
In any computer system, if the user knows the admin password and gives it, there is not much that can be done about it. In Windows, since the user is FORCED to run as admin because many programs do not run properly or at all otherwise, a password is not even asked for, possibly arousing the suspicion of a reasonably astute user.
The test account is a limited account that contains nothing that I would not be willing to post on the Internet. I NEVER give the admin password when running under the test account. There is NO reason for any program, (other than hardware drivers) in order to install or run, to need write access to system areas. So yes, a malware could write a lot of crap in the test account and fill up the disk and then cause system difficulties or even a crash.
The present server version of OSX does contain an access control list facility with a nice interface that allows finer control of permissions. The consumer version lacks the interface and must be set up manually through the terminal command line. Maybe Apple will make this interface available to everyone in the next version of OSX.
....Therefore nuclear weaponry is a joke unless you belong to a terrorist organization that does not care about what others think of you......
When a nation thinks is is about to be exterminated and has nothing to lose by lobbing nukes at their tormentors, nukes will fly. Then what was written in the ancient prophecy will come true:
Isaiah 17:1 Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap.
Damascus is one of the oldest, if not the oldest continually inhabited city on this planet. It has never been destroyed in all the wars that have swirled around it throughout the centuries. If Syria, allied with Iran threatens Israel with extermination and tries to make good on this threat, Damascus will be one of the first places to get nuked by a desperate Israel.
......Hardly a stretch to consider that they, too, have legitimate defense needs.......
Hitler also had legitimate defense needs. It took his invasion of another country to galvanize the world against him. Hitler's 'needs' were the more traditional reasons for war. Iran's government is controlled by a religious group whose leaders want to wipe Israel from the map. They have this in common with Hitler. So far in human history, there have been three attempts to eradicate the Jews from this planet and they have all failed. There will be at least one more attempt, called the war of Armageddon. This too is doomed to failure because of the promises of God to the descendants of Abraham, Jews and Arabs alike. After that last attempt, these two semitic brothers, who have been at each other's throats all these long centuries, will be reconciled and live in peace forever. The peace between Israel and Egypt is a harbinger of this. All the oil will not negate the promise of the God of Abraham to these people groups.
....One possibility is to arrange for unmarked German fighter-bombers to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities.....
When Israel feels truly threatened by Iran, they will bomb Iran's nuclear capability into oblivion. The did it before in Iraq. When their survival is at stake, the UNSC could make 10,000 resolutions each day and Israel will still "do what is necessary" to reduce or eliminate the threat of Iran. Since their return from exile in 1948 they have taken care of their business pretty well. Israel is here to stay, even if every country in the whole world might wish otherwise. Both Jews and Arabs consider Abraham their ancestor. God made great promises to ALL of Abraham's descendants and these cannot be broken by Jews, Arabs nor other humans. Someday these two semitic brothers WILL live side by side in peace.
......BS. How does Firefox download files to the desktop?.....
The same way any other program does. Each user account has its own desktop file. A preference setting under "downloads" in the program allows the user to specify any directory or volume he/she has write access to. The desktop is nothing but another folder. Each user has their own desktop folder.
Any file that wants to execute for the first time on a Mac brings up a warning. If a user downloads a file that masquerades as a plain file but is really some code, this warning comes up. "Program qqqqq is attempting to execute for the first time, do you want to allow this?" The user may then cancel or allow the program to proceed.
In addition, I have a nifty program called "Little Snitch" watches for any attempted network connections and puts up a warning: " A program called xxxxx wants to connect on port yyy to address zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz " do you want this to be allowed? The user can then choose to deny, allow once or always allow hereafter.
These are two indicators that something fishy is going on. A quick mouse click and such a suspect file is trashed.
A further security feature of a Mac is the simple fact that programs don't mess with the system and splatter junk all over the HD and thus can be gotten rid of easily. 99% of Mac software doesn't come with an uninstaller and there is no such in the system. Simply drag the offending files to the trash. Since my test account doesn't have much of anything in it and it has no access to any other part of computer or network, finding crap is quite easy.
I sincerely hope (probably in vain) that VISTA will incorporate some of these simple security measures, since malware and spam affect everyone.
....hell, many installer apps require that anyway -- and thus wiping out my whole disk......
More and more Mac programs don't need an installer. Just drag them to the Application folder. You do need and admin password to do this. Once there, every Mac user has access to the program and can set their own preferences.
Mac OS 10.4 includes an access control list mechanism for finer grained permissions. The Server version includes a nice admin program for this, but the normal version needs terminal commands and some geeky knowledge.
Programs, such as Firefox have write access only to the user's library which contains that user's configs.
I always try new downloaded programs as a different user first, before I run them on my account which contains sensitive data. All user accounts, except for one special admin account are standard. The test account has no password and so guests can use my systems also. Fast user switching makes this setup a breeze to use. When exploring the unknown reaches of the Internet, I use the test account.
.......On the speed issue though, whilst my Mac (running 10.4.7) boots up pretty quickly to the login box (about 20 seconds), it takes an incredibly large amount of time to log in on a fairly clean installation (about a minute). There's a great deal of work left to be done on the speed front. .......
While it is nice to have quick boot and login times, it is not really all that critical. In combination with fast user switching and sleep, neither my old PB nor my more modern G5 get re-booted often. Once a week maybe, if that. Apps like web and mail, simple office jobs including Excel, music and even video playback are still quite acceptable on the old 550Mhz PB. Encoding media and fancy graphics are another story though! Some time next year I'll replace the old PB with a shiny new Macbook Pro running 10.5
....It is not really all that much more advanced above the original NeXTstep of 1989, in that it uses an essentially identical architecture....
That may be, but in general, greater complexity makes for slower performance. Apple has been able to work against this general trend, whereas MS has not. OS9 boots much faster than OSX on the old Powerbook, unless I try to start up a lot of third party extensions. Said extensions were a constant source of frustration and system crashes. OS9 apps run about the same, whether the Mac is booted in to OS9 or under under classic compatibility under OSX.
....Currently, applications can install themselves anywhere they want. They can destroy everything I own, including most things in the registry.....
That is mostly because they will only work properly when run under an admin account. Why does an OS need such a thing as a registry in the first place? OSX doesn't have one and Mac apps don't have indiscriminate access to the system nor hardware, especially if run under a standard non-admin privileged account. Many Mac apps don't even need am installer program. The user just drags the program folder from the installation CD or download image to any place they have write access. This can be a server on the LAN. Of course, any program can write anywhere a user has write permissions. For this reason I try doubtful software under a special limited "experiment" account. Another limited user account has the "filevault" encryption enabled for "private" stuff.
.....Wouldn't it be nice if there were a way to start with a core operating system unit that could then have additional modules and applications bolted on as necessary'....
That is essentially what Apple has done. They started with some flavor of UNIX and then bolted on all the nifty features OSX now has. I still have a 550Mhz Titanium Powerbook which was announced in Jan 2001. I use this when I need a portable, rather than my 2Ghz G5. OSX 10.4.3 now running is considerably faster than the original 10.1, even though many new features have been added in the newer OS. It still has the 512MB RAM, but a bigger HD than what it had back then. Most of the HD space is filled with music.
MS Windows 98 runs fast thereon, Win 2000 runs is acceptable still on my old 800Mhz PC box, but XP is dog slow, so I put Win2K back on for an occasionally needed program. It seems that Windows NEEDS better hardware for each new generation, whereas the newer Mac OSX can still work reasonably well with older Macs.
....Right. And if people would quit sharing needles, engaging in dangerous activities, being mean to one another, and think only of the betterment of society much sickness, waste of tax money and other societal problems would be averted. Surely this is the society which all christians claim we should have.......
If there were such a country where everybody behaved as you suggest, I and many Americans and others would move there. Then you could take your chances with all the swingers, homo and bisexuals along with murderers, rapists, thieves, robbers and other mean and nasty people.
The first miracle Jesus did was to turn water into wine. Drinking alcohol as such is not proscribed, only getting drunk. God put alcohol and all sorts of substances here for us to use, but not to abuse. In ancient Israel there were all sorts of what we today would consider draconian laws against improper behavior, but interestingly, virtually NO laws against the mere possession of objects or substances. Today, 75% or more of prisoners, in the USA at least, directly or indirectly, are locked up because they were found to have something they are not supposed to have.
It is interesting that out of all religions you mention christianity. The kind of society you describe, one without crime, violence, rampant disease, hatred and war is what is prophesied in the Bible. It will come after mankind comes to the brink of extermination by the WMDs that have been and are being built. Messiah will come to Earth and avert the final and complete destruction of humanity and FORCE those few who survive to obey His rules. These will include the the ten commandments and the one man, one woman, one lifetime marriage law. The remaining inhabitants of this planet will understand that there are other intelligences in the universe and rebuild our ruined, crime infested world into a beautiful place, under the gentle, yet stern rule of Jesus the God-man.
It is well known that the best deterrence to *any* kind of lawbreaking is reduced by increasing the likelihood of getting caught, not the severity of the punishment. It will be a world where EVERY violator will be caught 100% of the time. Punishment in itself will not be severe, but sure. When you have a cop behind you, you don't do 60 in a 25mph zone. In that world, there will be no bad secrets. Anyone even thinking or planning to violate the just laws will be known and warned. People may still WANT to do wrong, but will know that there is no possibility of actually doing it without being called to account if they do it. If you harbor hatred in your mind, the object of that hate and everybody else will know it, as if it were written on your forehead with a black sharpie pen.
The basis of all laws will be: "Love your neighbor as yourself".
......And more importantly, you expect other people to deny themselves sexual gratification as well?.....
Of course not! Sex, like fire is good. Like fire, sex out of place is destructive. Find and marry a good woman. Keep her as your special treasure and she'll respond by giving you sexual pleasure.
....However, in this country it's not illegal to be a promiscuous fornicator ......
It can however be dangerous to your health (STD) or your freedom. The safest rule is: "One man, one woman, one lifetime together in marriage" If this moral law were followed, much sickness, waste of tax money and other society problems would be averted. A man happily married is not likely to go to a bar to get drunk and get into fights.
.....78% of the US population lives in urban areas.....
Some of our so called urban areas are larger than some entire countries on the list. This especially true in west coast cities. The cost of many services is less, the more customers are available in a given area. A better comparison would to figure out how many miles of wire it takes to connect people to the Internet even in urban areas. For US urban areas it takes a lot more wires and repeaters to service that population than in European cities. This means more investment per customer in the US.
........."You will now get this and this dialog. This is normal, just hit ok." ....
NO malware dialog can come up until the user gives OK to that warning. If the user doesn't click OK, nasty program cannot start. Also, in order to install programs, a user is asked for an admin password. There is NO way any program can install or run without user input; at least I have not heard of one. Unfortunately there is no protection for a dumb user in any OS. However, it is impossible to infect an out of the box Mac by simply connecting it directly to the Internet, firewall or no. All of the tiny amount of supposed Mac malware to date requires user action and the ignoring of warnings. Hackers would LOVE to have the bragging rights of having humiliated the admittedly and rightly smug Mac users by doing to Macs what is commonplace in the Windows environment. Maybe someday it will happen, but meanwhile I will not hold my breath.
I'm still reading articles of users connecting a Windows box to the Internet and getting infected before the needed patches can be downloaded and installed.
.... It certainly doesn't hinder worms and their ilk much. And don't get me started on that silly checksumming of applications....
Mac OSX has an interesting feature that should at least alert a user that something fishy is happening. Any executable trying to run the very first time, triggers a dialog that asks the user if that should be allowed. It adds the warning that the program could be malicious. Then the smart users may cancel the starting of that program.
....Lawyers don't produce anything the same as most people/jobs don't produce anything......
Since getting kicked out of paradise, a lot of jobs became necessary. Lawyers, doctors, law enforcers, repairers of broken stuff, exterminators, all militaries and more. If humans were truly good, this planet could be turned into a paradise by man. Meanwhile we are all burdened by the large effort required to keep evil from taking over and gaining the upper hand.
.....Yes you need a lot of power, but you do not need all that power in a single coherent beam.....
It is the average power needed to fill a reasonably large screen with an image of good brightness. Lasers only appear so bright because the spot can be focused very small. If that spot has to move rapidly to cover a large area, then the laser power is spread out over the whole area and the sensation of brightness to our eyes is small unless the power of the laser beam is high enough to burn a hole in things if it should ever stop moving.
Why is it that a normal projector using film, DLP or LCD technology needs such a powerful lamp? How can enough power to illuminate a large screen ever come from a battery operated device?
......A lot of people are simply afraid to drive there, so they don't.....
I guess you have not been in a German "STAU" (traffic jam). We came just two days after school let out for vacation in some of the German states and the Frankfurt AutoBahn was plugged up just as tight as LA or Seattle. Maybe some Americans are too chicken to drive in Germany, but other Europeans, such as from Scandinavia, where they do have limits similar to the USA don't seem to be. Many of them fly down the Autobahn to the sunny places in Italy.
Of course it requires much more skill to zoom along at 220-230Km/H than to dawdle along at a leisurely 90-100Km/h which is the speed limit for trucks. So any foreigner who is afraid or unable to pilot a car at jet take-off speed can just stay in line with the trucks in the right lane. There are columns of them many kilometers long. Driving a nice BMW or Mercedes at 200+ is a lot of fun actually, but rather strenuous for long. However, since Germany is smaller than Oregon, where we live, it is not necessary to spend all that much time behind the wheel in order to get places at such speeds. The 120km trip from where we are staying to the town where some of my ancestors are buried took only 45 minutes or so. We were zooming along pretty good in very sparse traffic, but there were still some cars passing us as if we were parked.
.....You realize that the posted speeds are "Km/H", right.....
Of course I do. I was talking about driving 230Km/H at times. That is still slow compared to the ICE trains, which is the way to go for people traveling alone. ICE goes past 300Km/H at times.
......MOST people simply CAN NOT HANDLE FASTER SPEEDS.....
BS to the highest degree! I am currently here in Germany (visiting) and most people drive insanely fast, and it's completely legal, especially on their freeways (Autobahn). Even though I am used to the snail paced speeds of the US, I have had no problem doing 140MPH along with the other traffic here. It's kind of fun to fly along like that, passing trucks as if they were parked. However, driving here is a full time job. Passengers, even by just talking to the driver when flying down the road at near takeoff speed of a jetliner, make for a dangerous, distracting situation. Sections of the Autobahn have posted limits, some of them indicated by electric signs sensitive to traffic and other safety considerations. Germans also drive faster on secondary and city roads that we would at home in similar situations. Posted limits on the roads are about equivalent, but fewer Germans pay attention to the posted limit.
I see no reason why, especially in the sparsely populated western states there should be general speed limits, especially on freeways. Post limits in metro areas, but let people drive at whatever speed they feel is safe for them. For some of such lonely stretches I have traveled, I have never seen a police patrol nor a driver pulled over.
....Merely observations that support a current theory.....
Current theory of the cause of the observed red shift needs the "dark" matter-energy to explain the motion of distant objects. If the red shift is NOT due to doppler effects, the dark stuff is not needed and would have never been dreamed up. All motion in the universe at large distances is controlled by gravity. So to explain the motion of distant objects it becomes necessary 1) to modify gravity itself or 2) postulate an unobserved source of additional gravity. To mess with a reliably tested law, like gravity is distasteful, so the second option was taken. If the cause of the red shift is something OTHER than the doppler effect, the distances and ages may not be what we think they are and the universe may no longer be expanding. Distant objects may not be moving away form us and each other at speeds that are a significant fraction of light speed.
......But maybe we can get our hands on some dark matter.......
Why should dark matter or energy exist in the far reaches of the universe and not here? If these are not theoretical constructs based on faulty interpretation of observed data, then these "dark" entities should present some evidence of themselves right here in our back yard, rather than a few million or billion light years distant. I'll believe in the existence of dark matter if someone can bring evidence for it right here on earth.
Is the postulate of dark matter-energy not based ultimately on the common doppler interpretation of the red shift? If the red shift is caused by other phenomena, all that "dark" stuff may suddenly not be needed to explain certain galactic observations.
In all of nature, nothing is more 'constant' than change. Why is the assumption that certain relationships of time and space have always been what we have observe them today, hung on to so tenaciously?
We have only been observing these things scientifically for a few nanoseconds of the history of the universe. How do we know for example that the properties of "empty" space are the same today, as they were near the beginning of time? When the universe was small and dense, therefore, of necessity, space itself was also vastly different.
If the red shift is caused by a fundamental change in the properties of space itself, the size and age estimates of the universe may be vastly wrong. Dark stuff then is not needed at all to make sense of what we actually OBSERVE!
.....biofuels are _not_ an energy source.....
Fossil fuels are biofuels made from solar energy that came down on earth a long time ago and was captured by the plants that made the fossils.
.....improperly shielded nuclear reactor!.....
Just get suntan lotion of at least SP5 and you should be OK.