Guess I'm going back to Adobe 5.1 again. And yes, I still have the install.
I did this back a couple of years ago, when Adobe used an Acrobat update to introduce a "feature" that causes all other installed Adobe software (FrameMaker and Photoshop for sure) to phone home every time you start them (http://slashdot.org/~DrVomact/journal/180759). I don't understand why nobody else got upset about this.
By the way,
have you figured out how to disable the annoying prompt that reminds you that your version of Acrobat Reader is out of date, and you may not be able to see all the nifty new features in the document you are opening? Clicking the "Don't tell me again" box does no good—the dialog still pops up every time. 5.1 works fine in every other respect.
It scares me when posts like yours get modded Insightful. In my 38 years, I know I've seen a difference in the seasons that is notable and undeniable. Without measurements, I can say with certainty that our climate is changing.
You are certain of this. Without measurements. Sir, the fact that you are right is as inconsequential as it is accidental. The Earth's climate has always been in a state of flux...but I don't recall this from memory, I know if from my reading of geology, paleontology, and history.
Don't be silly—I got her back (slightly dusty), or I wouldn't have been able to make all my connections, eh? Hmm. Oh. The network printer...did I ever finish that? Oh my. Where's the flashlight. 'Scuse me.
I tried using Netgear powerline devices to connect my outside security cameras to my router about a year ago. It kinda worked--as long as I didn't expect too much in the way of throughput—like streaming video instead of occasional JPEGs. I also had a couple of computers connected via Wi-Fi at the time, and was so (unreasonably) encouraged by this less than stellar success that I switched them over to powerline "warts" too. They worked pretty well.
Then I moved my router to another room, and I haven't gotten these things to work ever again. Apparently, if your house wiring is just so, the powerline warts are fine; if the wiring—or the wiring between the points you are trying to connect—is not what the warts want, you won't get a signal.
Somebody told me I should try one of those "bridges" that the X-10 people use to connect different parts of their home wiring so their X10 devices work, but messing with these things was giving me a worse chronic eyelid twitch than wireless. Luckily, I discovered that my youngest daughter has all the necessary qualifications for an excellent cable monkey—mainly, she's petite enough to worm her way through tight, dark spaces, and isn't afraid of spiders. So I just tied some CAT5 to her ankle and sent her into the attic. No more problems now, everything's connected. Wire is good.
Well, the phone itself is only $179. If I get a 2 year contract with T Mobile. But then they want to charge me not only whatever it costs to get regular cell phone service, but the extra $35 month too (if I actually want to use the G phone for internet stuff). Yes, the phone market over here in the US sucks badly.
My current phone is an unlocked Treo I got about 3 years ago, and I've been using T Mobile without a contract (just pay as I use). The reason I use T Mobile at all is that they are the only US phone company I've found that is somewhat clueful about international operations. I've never had a problem connecting when I go to Europe. In fact, my phone works a lot better over there...
I'd actually love to have an Android phone (the one with the keyboard), but I'm not willing to pay the extra $35/month T Mobile wants to charge for internet access (plus the regular rate for phone calls, of course). So it doesn't really matter how many great Android phones come out—the whole point of Android is constantly available internet connectivity, so there's no point in my buying one if I'm not willing to cough up that extra money.
Maybe this is a fair charge, maybe not, but I guess I have no urgent need to be connected to the internet 24/7 (I have computers at work and at home that I can use for that, after all), and my techno-lust is not sufficient to make me pay the extra fee.
Maybe the fees will come down once there are unlocked Androids for sale, and every cellular service supports them. Then maybe I'll take a second look.
It did in the USA, the UK, and every other country that went through a transition from a mostly agricultural to an industrial economy.
Yes...but didn't labor unions and strikes have something to do with those changes? The bosses didn't start raising salaries and treating their workers like human beings until the workers demanded it.
I know China is a police state, but a lot of strikes in the West were met by police state tactics, sometimes resulting in minor wars or major insurrections. Take a look at the bloodletting in Kentucky and West Virginia that occurred during the long history of bitter coal industry strikes over the last hundred years. Some of those were, indeed, small wars—armed miners shooting it out with company goons and tame police. (The movie to watch is Matewan. Here's a short summary of the story http://www.matewan.com/History/battle.htm. The film's available used at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Matewan-Jace-Alexander/dp/6304383657.)
Basically, there's just so much people can take, and when they reach their limit, they'll stop keeping their heads down. Until then, I have little sympathy to spare for workers who willingly submit to such treatment.
DRM is bad, agreed—but monopoly is worse. If you buy a Kindle, you are buying into a scheme where you can buy media from only one vendor, and your media is not likely to ever be readable anywhere but on your Kindle.
I'm not buying any ebook until the publishing industry gets together and agrees on a standard (i.e., decides just which crappy DRM scheme they will stick us with.) That would mean the beginnings of a real competitive market in the ebook field: you would have a choice of manufacturers from which to choose, and a choice of media vendors.
The ebook situation today is as though there were a few companies selling DVD players, and each would only play DVDs made by that company. Would you buy one? That was, in fact, the actual situation at the very start of the audio record industry. Some people did buy those early proprietary format record players, for the sheer novelty value. I suppose that's the reason people buy Kindles. But ebooks will not become ubiquitous until the media rights issues are straightened out in a way that's at least minimally acceptable to manufacturers, publishers, and readers alike.
Seems to me you argue for absolute morals because it is convenient.
No, you are quite mistaken. I don't argue for "absolute morals"—I'm not at all sure I even understand what "absolute morals" are. I also don't understand why you think that you have only two choices: either morality is "absolute" or it's "relative". Above all, I wasn't trying to provide an answer, I was merely pointing out that your position is completely untenable in the sense that you yourself cannot consistently hold it. Unless, of course, you are actually a "fascist"; then I may, once again, have to refer you to Mr. Glock.
When you posit I have, under my views, no "right" to complain about the actions of others, you are bringing an absolutist judgment into a relativistic system.
No. I'm not "positing" it, I'm stating the obvious consequences of your own view, inasmuch as I find that view intelligible at all. If you're going to assert that everyone is free to make up their own notions about right and wrong, and that each person's judgment in these matters carries the same weight as anyone else's, then any discussion of "right" (or "wrong")becomes pointless. At best, we're talking about personal preferences, like a taste for chocolate or a preference in wines. I'm too busy for that.
Now, here's the thing. Relativism doesn't do away with "right" and "wrong". Almost all of us have a strong emotional response to wrongful actions, as we perceive them. Almost all of us will, in some circumstances, act upon our personal morals to the detriment of others, even if we do believe their moral choices are just as correct to them as ours to ourselves.
I don't follow you. You say that your position is pleased to leave us with "right" and "wrong", and that these consist of "emotions". I take this to mean that some of us are revolted by child rape and murder like certain people are repelled by steak tartare; others have more positive feelings about such things. But why are these feelings of the slightest importance—unless, of course, they're my own?
Enough of this, Mr. Relatively Slow Fascist, you have convinced me. I shall devise my very own Moral System. Its Prime Directive is: Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Fool to Live.
Your absolute definition is, to me, simply one of many relative definitions of right and wrong. Without a supreme authority there can be no absolute definition.
I assume you assume there is no supreme authority. OK—granted for the sake of argument. Now, why do you think that if the God of Abraham doesn't exist, then relativism is the only possible alternative?
It can't be, because no sensible person could possibly embrace a view as naive as the one you express, if he gave it even a little thought. Relativism means that we have no common moral ground. You can screw anybody you want to, and I can screw you—and you will have no right to complain about it. Are you sure you want to hold this position?
The segue into "might makes right", followed by "it's OK, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" is left as an exercise for the undergraduate reader.
If every view is equally correct, then everything I do in accordance with my own view is correct in my own system, and that's as good as it can ever get. To live is to tread on others. You can try to minimize that if you wish, but you will hurt others, and no justification will make that hurt go away. You just make do.
What absolute twaddle; what a waste of perfectly good words. You, sir, are one of the reasons I don't teach any more. It's too tempting to introduce students like you to Mr. Glock. "Do you really want to argue for relativism, young man? That's a 148 grain Black Talon up the barrel, and I'm having one of my gullible days, so think carefully before you answer."
You must admit, and armed philosopher concentrates the mind.
I'm afraid I'd have to pay you to answer yet more questions that I could, after all, look up myself...for example: is there any way to prevent malicious sites from using ClickOnce to create what look like ordinary link buttons, but that cause the download of something I really don't want running on my computer?
By "sandboxed" you probably mean "locked safely away from doing any harm". The problem with this is that for software to do useful and interesting things, it has to be given some latitude. It may have to modify files, do a little registry poking, modify the odd permission bit here or there...well, you get my drift—the more latitude you give the downloaded app, the greater the risk. The original intent of JavaScript was to be completely safe by preventing it from changing just about anything on our computers. I think that's why Microsoft gave us ActiveX, right?
As I understand it, this add-on just alters the useragent to declare that the PC it's running on is.NET capable (i.e. you got at least one version of the.NET framework installed). This is a good thing - as it means MORE sites that have.net extensions or controls will work in FF, meaning you can finally ditch IE completely (in theory).
So you're saying that the MS extension allows the browser to communicate the fact that it is ".NET capable" to web servers. Aside from the fact that having MS add a communication feature to FireFox reflexively makes me say "security hole", what advantage does this.NET capability buy me? Why do I care? Firefox was working fine as is; if a site was broken to Firefox, I assumed that it was run by stupid-heads, and I didn't want to buy their stuff (or whatever) anyway. I don't think that encouraging web authors to write sites that depend on.NET is necessarily a good thing. How will.NET improve the web, and how is it in our interests to have the web become dependent on this Microsoft proprietary technology. Could you explain what I'm missing?
Why he wouldn't just come inside to eat the exact same food was beyond me.
Cats hate to pass up any chance to make a human open a door. Also, it may be that he thought you thought the food was special, because you were putting it in a special box outside just for him. Presentation is everything, as any chef will tell you.
As for your stray cat problems, I highly recommend a method I once used to capture a nasty old tom that was terrorizing the neighborhood:
Find female cat in heat.
Obtain sturdy cardboard box large enough to contain the target.
Fasten female cat by her collar to a handy fence post or other suitable anchor point.
Stand beside female cat, holding box at the ready.
At this point, it is only a matter of very little time. The tom cat must approach the female, even though he sees you, his deadly enemy standing beside her. His brain has been disordered by pheromones, and his higher cognitive functions have been overridden by lust.
At a suitable moment, plop the box over the objective. Try not to capture the female in the same box, unless you want to get rid of her too.
Obviously, this method only works for unaltered toms. The reverse might possibly work for capturing a female cat in heat...but their cognitive functions are harder to override, so I doubt it.
Well allow me to add that it is NOT, I repeat NOT just Visual Studio....this "extension" was installed along with the latest patch for DotNET V3.5.
Great. I just installed a.NET "cumulative update" on my PC at home. So now I get to chase down malware tonight. Just wonderful.
I was wondering whether I should install the update, because I haven't the faintest idea what uses.NETCRAP. It was a huge patch. Is there any way to tell what apps on my system depend on this? Or can I just uninstall.NETBLOAT and not worry?
If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect.
The headline says "Miscalculation Invalidates LHC Safety Assurances", yet the quote from the abstract seems to say that because arguments are sometimes "flawed" (terribly squishy word, that), it follows that for crucially important calculations we have to...well, the abstract doesn't say what we should do, and there's no link to the actual article. (Maybe there's a good reason for the latter.)
This amounts to the assertion that if an estimate is about something very important, then we can't trust the estimate, because some estimates are mistaken. In other words, we can't make estimates about important things—just trivial ones.
Unless someone produces the article in question, and unless it actually makes a more substantial argument than I quoted, I vote this a waste of my time on the part of whoever submitted it. May the rats eat your mail.
How come you feel that the government owes you a converter box in the first place? You don't have to watch TV. (In fact, I don't know why anyone would want to, but that's a separate issue.) Watching TV is not necessary for your well-being. You obviously have a computer, or access to one, so you can get your news off the internet, or that old-fashioned thing called "radio". (NPR actually does a pretty good job of reporting the news ever since the Republicans spanked them back in the 80s).
So, why does the government owe you a converter? If it weren't for the government, TV programs would have been exclusively digital before this. Maybe you have good reasons, and I'm missing something, but I'd like to hear what they are.
I got my undergrad degree from Berzerkeley. At the time, Art History was pretty much a required course. It was held only at 8 AM, in Wheeler Auditorium (this was before somebody burned it down). Promptly at 8AM, the prof would turn out the lights and start showing slides. Mostly they were The Madonna of This and That, by some Italian guy. My max was five madonnas, after which I would be in deep REM sleep. I mean...they expected me to stay awake? In the dark ? At EIGHT IN THE MORNING????
The only thing I learned in that course was that sleep learning definitely doesn't work. Luckily, I had signed up for it pass/no pass, and in those days, at least, it didn't count on my GPA...
Remember that you learned this preposterous story from your son, who learned his concept of reality with you. Your acceptance of this obviously falsified or wildly embellished story as reality shows that your understanding of reality is deeply flawed. This, in turn, implies that your son's understanding of reality is similarly flawed. By the time the story gets to us through you two highly imperfect filters, it's pretty much meaningless.
Sir, I have carefully examined your comment for irony, and regretfully concluded that you are actually serious. I must, in turn, conclude that you are yourself a victim of what passes for a college education these days. That is to say, you know very little, your ability for critical thought has been removed, and have been trained to think only within narrowly constricted bounds—when you are forced to think at all.
To the original poster: It may not be too late for your son. Rescue him now, and the programming may wear off. Advise him to learn a useful trade, and educate himself as best he can.
I just take my old drives out to the shooting range, and put about a half dozen 12 gauge shotgun slugs through them. I dunno how secure this is, but I haven't had anyone express undue interest in my private data lately.
Hey, they make special drive shredders? People pay to use them? Hmm...I think I have an idea for a fun business...
The sane internet died a decade ago. We're in the death throws of the internet-of-the-corporate-hack. Likely our next stop will be the reincarnation of an AOL like atmosphere where a central application or website insulates you from the internet, and provides you with a limited array of things to do.
Holy cow, you've hit on the solution! This is exactly what's needed! Needed not by us, of course, but by normals. Consider the possibilities. As you well know, over 90% of the people who own computers are not qualified to use anything more complex than a simple calculator. Computers are very complex tools. What are normals using these tools for? Well, to write email, maybe do their online banking, post stupid pictures of their kids on some website and...what else do normals use computers for? Not counting apps like Free Cell that don't require an internet connection, I mean. The rest of the CPU cycles of these computers are used to transmit spam and various malware—they are the soldiers of the botnets.
Then there's the maintenance & support headaches. Who here doesn't have a gaggle of clueless relatives and friends who bombard them with stupid questions and pleas for help with their malware-clogged, zombified computers? And then blame you the next time something goes wrong?
Well, the solution is now within our reach: put everyone of these people on dumb terminals connected to a service like AOL that gives them very limited options so they're not confused. They just plug it in, turn it on, and the user menu—complete with cute tail-wagging puppy—comes up. Give them access to word processing or spreadsheet apps on a pay-as-you go basis. (No installation hassles!) Sure, their data is now 0wnz0red by some corporate empire, but normals don't care about this kind of stuff.
Better yet, all maintenance problems now become the service provider's problem. You can honestly say "Gee, I can't help you with that, but if you call MyIntarnet's tech support, I'm sure they'll fix it". Best of all, without an on-board hard drive, there's no problem with virus/trojan/worm propagation. Spam will finally die...well diminish, anyhow.
Of course that's for them; people who know better would still use real computers. It would be even better if they could have their own internet sorta like AOL was in the early days...but that's probably not practical.
I've been buying stuff from Amazon ever since 1886 or whenever it was that they started selling stuff. And ever since about that time, I've been ignoring their plea to sign up for "1 Click ordering". It sounds like maybe I would just click on some button and it would order stuff for me. Would it be stuff I wanted? I dunno, but I've always been afraid to turn it on. Besides, I like to think about what I'm buying, and going through a bunch of steps makes it harder for me to order stuff I don't really want, or order stuff by mistake. So what does the one click thing do anyway, and why would I want it? It must be mighty keen for them to want to fight so hard to patent it.
You can use a Windows machine to demonstrate the error of the scientific method:
1. Windows crashed when I tried to print a document.
2. Windows did not crash when I was not printing a document.
3. Therefore, printing documents causes Windows to crash.
I'm not sure how serious you are about this. If you're serious, then I'd say that you are confused about the difference between science and logic. What you stated is simply an invalid argument; it has nothing to do with science per se. Inference and logical thought play their part in science, but these rational tools are also used by lawyers, investigators, and philosophers (to name a few). Anyone who thinks that the argument above is valid just can't think straight.
Slashdot Mirror
Guess I'm going back to Adobe 5.1 again. And yes, I still have the install.
I did this back a couple of years ago, when Adobe used an Acrobat update to introduce a "feature" that causes all other installed Adobe software (FrameMaker and Photoshop for sure) to phone home every time you start them (http://slashdot.org/~DrVomact/journal/180759). I don't understand why nobody else got upset about this.
By the way, have you figured out how to disable the annoying prompt that reminds you that your version of Acrobat Reader is out of date, and you may not be able to see all the nifty new features in the document you are opening? Clicking the "Don't tell me again" box does no good—the dialog still pops up every time. 5.1 works fine in every other respect.
You are certain of this. Without measurements. Sir, the fact that you are right is as inconsequential as it is accidental. The Earth's climate has always been in a state of flux...but I don't recall this from memory, I know if from my reading of geology, paleontology, and history.
Don't be silly—I got her back (slightly dusty), or I wouldn't have been able to make all my connections, eh? Hmm. Oh. The network printer...did I ever finish that? Oh my. Where's the flashlight. 'Scuse me.
I tried using Netgear powerline devices to connect my outside security cameras to my router about a year ago. It kinda worked--as long as I didn't expect too much in the way of throughput—like streaming video instead of occasional JPEGs. I also had a couple of computers connected via Wi-Fi at the time, and was so (unreasonably) encouraged by this less than stellar success that I switched them over to powerline "warts" too. They worked pretty well.
Then I moved my router to another room, and I haven't gotten these things to work ever again. Apparently, if your house wiring is just so, the powerline warts are fine; if the wiring—or the wiring between the points you are trying to connect—is not what the warts want, you won't get a signal.
Somebody told me I should try one of those "bridges" that the X-10 people use to connect different parts of their home wiring so their X10 devices work, but messing with these things was giving me a worse chronic eyelid twitch than wireless. Luckily, I discovered that my youngest daughter has all the necessary qualifications for an excellent cable monkey—mainly, she's petite enough to worm her way through tight, dark spaces, and isn't afraid of spiders. So I just tied some CAT5 to her ankle and sent her into the attic. No more problems now, everything's connected. Wire is good.
Well, the phone itself is only $179. If I get a 2 year contract with T Mobile. But then they want to charge me not only whatever it costs to get regular cell phone service, but the extra $35 month too (if I actually want to use the G phone for internet stuff). Yes, the phone market over here in the US sucks badly.
My current phone is an unlocked Treo I got about 3 years ago, and I've been using T Mobile without a contract (just pay as I use). The reason I use T Mobile at all is that they are the only US phone company I've found that is somewhat clueful about international operations. I've never had a problem connecting when I go to Europe. In fact, my phone works a lot better over there...
I'd actually love to have an Android phone (the one with the keyboard), but I'm not willing to pay the extra $35/month T Mobile wants to charge for internet access (plus the regular rate for phone calls, of course). So it doesn't really matter how many great Android phones come out—the whole point of Android is constantly available internet connectivity, so there's no point in my buying one if I'm not willing to cough up that extra money.
Maybe this is a fair charge, maybe not, but I guess I have no urgent need to be connected to the internet 24/7 (I have computers at work and at home that I can use for that, after all), and my techno-lust is not sufficient to make me pay the extra fee.
Maybe the fees will come down once there are unlocked Androids for sale, and every cellular service supports them. Then maybe I'll take a second look.
Yes...but didn't labor unions and strikes have something to do with those changes? The bosses didn't start raising salaries and treating their workers like human beings until the workers demanded it.
I know China is a police state, but a lot of strikes in the West were met by police state tactics, sometimes resulting in minor wars or major insurrections. Take a look at the bloodletting in Kentucky and West Virginia that occurred during the long history of bitter coal industry strikes over the last hundred years. Some of those were, indeed, small wars—armed miners shooting it out with company goons and tame police. (The movie to watch is Matewan. Here's a short summary of the story http://www.matewan.com/History/battle.htm. The film's available used at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Matewan-Jace-Alexander/dp/6304383657.)
Basically, there's just so much people can take, and when they reach their limit, they'll stop keeping their heads down. Until then, I have little sympathy to spare for workers who willingly submit to such treatment.
DRM is bad, agreed—but monopoly is worse. If you buy a Kindle, you are buying into a scheme where you can buy media from only one vendor, and your media is not likely to ever be readable anywhere but on your Kindle.
I'm not buying any ebook until the publishing industry gets together and agrees on a standard (i.e., decides just which crappy DRM scheme they will stick us with.) That would mean the beginnings of a real competitive market in the ebook field: you would have a choice of manufacturers from which to choose, and a choice of media vendors.
The ebook situation today is as though there were a few companies selling DVD players, and each would only play DVDs made by that company. Would you buy one? That was, in fact, the actual situation at the very start of the audio record industry. Some people did buy those early proprietary format record players, for the sheer novelty value. I suppose that's the reason people buy Kindles. But ebooks will not become ubiquitous until the media rights issues are straightened out in a way that's at least minimally acceptable to manufacturers, publishers, and readers alike.
No, you are quite mistaken. I don't argue for "absolute morals"—I'm not at all sure I even understand what "absolute morals" are. I also don't understand why you think that you have only two choices: either morality is "absolute" or it's "relative". Above all, I wasn't trying to provide an answer, I was merely pointing out that your position is completely untenable in the sense that you yourself cannot consistently hold it. Unless, of course, you are actually a "fascist"; then I may, once again, have to refer you to Mr. Glock.
No. I'm not "positing" it, I'm stating the obvious consequences of your own view, inasmuch as I find that view intelligible at all. If you're going to assert that everyone is free to make up their own notions about right and wrong, and that each person's judgment in these matters carries the same weight as anyone else's, then any discussion of "right" (or "wrong")becomes pointless. At best, we're talking about personal preferences, like a taste for chocolate or a preference in wines. I'm too busy for that.
I don't follow you. You say that your position is pleased to leave us with "right" and "wrong", and that these consist of "emotions". I take this to mean that some of us are revolted by child rape and murder like certain people are repelled by steak tartare; others have more positive feelings about such things. But why are these feelings of the slightest importance—unless, of course, they're my own?
Enough of this, Mr. Relatively Slow Fascist, you have convinced me. I shall devise my very own Moral System. Its Prime Directive is: Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Fool to Live.
I assume you assume there is no supreme authority. OK—granted for the sake of argument. Now, why do you think that if the God of Abraham doesn't exist, then relativism is the only possible alternative?
It can't be, because no sensible person could possibly embrace a view as naive as the one you express, if he gave it even a little thought. Relativism means that we have no common moral ground. You can screw anybody you want to, and I can screw you—and you will have no right to complain about it. Are you sure you want to hold this position?
The segue into "might makes right", followed by "it's OK, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else" is left as an exercise for the undergraduate reader.
What absolute twaddle; what a waste of perfectly good words. You, sir, are one of the reasons I don't teach any more. It's too tempting to introduce students like you to Mr. Glock. "Do you really want to argue for relativism, young man? That's a 148 grain Black Talon up the barrel, and I'm having one of my gullible days, so think carefully before you answer."
You must admit, and armed philosopher concentrates the mind.
Thanks, that's a good explanation!
I'm afraid I'd have to pay you to answer yet more questions that I could, after all, look up myself...for example: is there any way to prevent malicious sites from using ClickOnce to create what look like ordinary link buttons, but that cause the download of something I really don't want running on my computer?
By "sandboxed" you probably mean "locked safely away from doing any harm". The problem with this is that for software to do useful and interesting things, it has to be given some latitude. It may have to modify files, do a little registry poking, modify the odd permission bit here or there...well, you get my drift—the more latitude you give the downloaded app, the greater the risk. The original intent of JavaScript was to be completely safe by preventing it from changing just about anything on our computers. I think that's why Microsoft gave us ActiveX, right?
Could you (or some kind person) please tell me what ClickOnce is?
So you're saying that the MS extension allows the browser to communicate the fact that it is ".NET capable" to web servers. Aside from the fact that having MS add a communication feature to FireFox reflexively makes me say "security hole", what advantage does this .NET capability buy me? Why do I care? Firefox was working fine as is; if a site was broken to Firefox, I assumed that it was run by stupid-heads, and I didn't want to buy their stuff (or whatever) anyway. I don't think that encouraging web authors to write sites that depend on .NET is necessarily a good thing. How will .NET improve the web, and how is it in our interests to have the web become dependent on this Microsoft proprietary technology. Could you explain what I'm missing?
The part when the fur starts flying as MS and Amazon take the One Button Click patent to court.
Why he wouldn't just come inside to eat the exact same food was beyond me.
Cats hate to pass up any chance to make a human open a door. Also, it may be that he thought you thought the food was special, because you were putting it in a special box outside just for him. Presentation is everything, as any chef will tell you.
As for your stray cat problems, I highly recommend a method I once used to capture a nasty old tom that was terrorizing the neighborhood:
Obviously, this method only works for unaltered toms. The reverse might possibly work for capturing a female cat in heat...but their cognitive functions are harder to override, so I doubt it.
Great. I just installed a .NET "cumulative update" on my PC at home. So now I get to chase down malware tonight. Just wonderful.
I was wondering whether I should install the update, because I haven't the faintest idea what uses .NETCRAP. It was a huge patch. Is there any way to tell what apps on my system depend on this? Or can I just uninstall .NETBLOAT and not worry?
If the probability estimate given by an argument is dwarfed by the chance that the argument itself is flawed, then the estimate is suspect.
The headline says "Miscalculation Invalidates LHC Safety Assurances", yet the quote from the abstract seems to say that because arguments are sometimes "flawed" (terribly squishy word, that), it follows that for crucially important calculations we have to...well, the abstract doesn't say what we should do, and there's no link to the actual article. (Maybe there's a good reason for the latter.)
This amounts to the assertion that if an estimate is about something very important, then we can't trust the estimate, because some estimates are mistaken. In other words, we can't make estimates about important things—just trivial ones.
Unless someone produces the article in question, and unless it actually makes a more substantial argument than I quoted, I vote this a waste of my time on the part of whoever submitted it. May the rats eat your mail.
I got fucked by this crappy legislation.
How come you feel that the government owes you a converter box in the first place? You don't have to watch TV. (In fact, I don't know why anyone would want to, but that's a separate issue.) Watching TV is not necessary for your well-being. You obviously have a computer, or access to one, so you can get your news off the internet, or that old-fashioned thing called "radio". (NPR actually does a pretty good job of reporting the news ever since the Republicans spanked them back in the 80s).
So, why does the government owe you a converter? If it weren't for the government, TV programs would have been exclusively digital before this. Maybe you have good reasons, and I'm missing something, but I'd like to hear what they are.
Ah! *Smacks self on forhead* Had I only known, I would have gone into deeper, more restful sleep, and probably aced the course.
I got my undergrad degree from Berzerkeley. At the time, Art History was pretty much a required course. It was held only at 8 AM, in Wheeler Auditorium (this was before somebody burned it down). Promptly at 8AM, the prof would turn out the lights and start showing slides. Mostly they were The Madonna of This and That, by some Italian guy. My max was five madonnas, after which I would be in deep REM sleep. I mean...they expected me to stay awake? In the dark ? At EIGHT IN THE MORNING????
The only thing I learned in that course was that sleep learning definitely doesn't work. Luckily, I had signed up for it pass/no pass, and in those days, at least, it didn't count on my GPA...
Sir, I have carefully examined your comment for irony, and regretfully concluded that you are actually serious. I must, in turn, conclude that you are yourself a victim of what passes for a college education these days. That is to say, you know very little, your ability for critical thought has been removed, and have been trained to think only within narrowly constricted bounds—when you are forced to think at all.
To the original poster: It may not be too late for your son. Rescue him now, and the programming may wear off. Advise him to learn a useful trade, and educate himself as best he can.
I just take my old drives out to the shooting range, and put about a half dozen 12 gauge shotgun slugs through them. I dunno how secure this is, but I haven't had anyone express undue interest in my private data lately.
Hey, they make special drive shredders? People pay to use them? Hmm...I think I have an idea for a fun business...
Holy cow, you've hit on the solution! This is exactly what's needed! Needed not by us, of course, but by normals. Consider the possibilities. As you well know, over 90% of the people who own computers are not qualified to use anything more complex than a simple calculator. Computers are very complex tools. What are normals using these tools for? Well, to write email, maybe do their online banking, post stupid pictures of their kids on some website and...what else do normals use computers for? Not counting apps like Free Cell that don't require an internet connection, I mean. The rest of the CPU cycles of these computers are used to transmit spam and various malware—they are the soldiers of the botnets.
Then there's the maintenance & support headaches. Who here doesn't have a gaggle of clueless relatives and friends who bombard them with stupid questions and pleas for help with their malware-clogged, zombified computers? And then blame you the next time something goes wrong?
Well, the solution is now within our reach: put everyone of these people on dumb terminals connected to a service like AOL that gives them very limited options so they're not confused. They just plug it in, turn it on, and the user menu—complete with cute tail-wagging puppy—comes up. Give them access to word processing or spreadsheet apps on a pay-as-you go basis. (No installation hassles!) Sure, their data is now 0wnz0red by some corporate empire, but normals don't care about this kind of stuff.
Better yet, all maintenance problems now become the service provider's problem. You can honestly say "Gee, I can't help you with that, but if you call MyIntarnet's tech support, I'm sure they'll fix it". Best of all, without an on-board hard drive, there's no problem with virus/trojan/worm propagation. Spam will finally die...well diminish, anyhow.
Of course that's for them; people who know better would still use real computers. It would be even better if they could have their own internet sorta like AOL was in the early days...but that's probably not practical.
I've been buying stuff from Amazon ever since 1886 or whenever it was that they started selling stuff. And ever since about that time, I've been ignoring their plea to sign up for "1 Click ordering". It sounds like maybe I would just click on some button and it would order stuff for me. Would it be stuff I wanted? I dunno, but I've always been afraid to turn it on. Besides, I like to think about what I'm buying, and going through a bunch of steps makes it harder for me to order stuff I don't really want, or order stuff by mistake. So what does the one click thing do anyway, and why would I want it? It must be mighty keen for them to want to fight so hard to patent it.
I'm not sure how serious you are about this. If you're serious, then I'd say that you are confused about the difference between science and logic. What you stated is simply an invalid argument; it has nothing to do with science per se. Inference and logical thought play their part in science, but these rational tools are also used by lawyers, investigators, and philosophers (to name a few). Anyone who thinks that the argument above is valid just can't think straight.