How many people have said, "We must believe in God, for if we do, and he does not exist, nothing happens. But if we do not believe in him, and he does exist, then we are doomed." But, it's fairly clear he does not exist.
Two points. One, back in the old days every single country/kingdom had its own God, as a side effect of each King being God's chosen and making an extended set of rules for what God was. To that end, there's actually multiple Gods one could believe in, now called denominations (and created under a different set of circumstances). The point is, simply believing in a God doesn't mean you'll believe in the right one. And virtually all denominations are exclusive. So, this idea of believing in a God to avoid punishment simply won't work because you can't be sure you'll pick the right one.
Two, religion is by definition the supernatural. All proof is natural. So, there's no way proof can prove or disprove the supernatural. Of course, just because God might exist doesn't mean you should follow him, even if you were able to guess the right religion. It takes a certain bit of character to look at God's acts, determine that there's things you find flawed (humanly, so), and be willing to take any sort of punishment from God because it would be amoral to simply buckle under the threat of eternal damnation to follow an unjust leader.
So, instead of framing the question as one of trying to answer the unprovable, one can simply refuse to follow a God on moral grounds. To me, that seems a firmer foundation.
You're right about English being quirky (I wouldn't exactly call it broken), but clearly Polish and polish are composed of different characters, so without special provisions there's no reason why they should be treated the same. Many computer languages at a fundamental level supports variable creation out of a set of characters, normally letters (upper and lower) and numbers. But, there's nothing to stop a person from composing a computer language that only excepts kanji, for instance.
The fact is, the only real expectation you should have of a compiler is that it adheres to the language it's meant to compile; you shouldn't expect German to follow the exact same case rules as English--that's either ignorance or arrogance. It's equally silly to expect a computer language to use punctuation in the exact same way as a human language. All human languages, AFAIK, are context sensitive, but computer languages are merely context free. In simple terms, human languages are an order more complex than computer languages. It is for this reason that we've still not created a perfect bablefish, but it's perfectly possible to translate one general purpose language to another--language-dependent binary libraries can hinder this translation, of course.
This last point means that trying to make a computer language that approached a human language would require an order magnitude more time and complexity to make a compiler to implement it. At the same time, programs written in such a language would almost certainly not do exactly what you want because of the ambiguity of human languages. So, it seems a bit silly to complain about computer languages not adhering to some ambiguous standard on what you consider a good language. But perhaps you'd be happy if a compromise was reached and you simply couldn't enter in upper case for variables (or filenames)?
Remember that getting the prototype up and running is the interesting bit - getting it polished, fully QAed and packaged is the dull slog that no-one really wants to do.
Yea, it almost sounds like the first part is what the OSS/outside proprietary company does and the latter is what the in-house programmers are paid to do. In fact, that covers the full cycle for in-house software and external (ie, boxed) software.
So, some/most those projects that start out incomplete on sourceforge will become more complete as a side effect of in-house developers contributing back to the main project. And those projects will always be incomplete for the same reason all other software is incomplete: external software is never exactly what you need, so there's always those final steps necessary to customize it for the specific task.
Ah, security through unavailability. So, by your logic it's perfectly okay for MS to release Windows Longhorn with vulnerabilities existent in the original build of Windows XP then release fix patches the next day, pretending that somehow makes this makes MS more responsive to security than they were with XP? Hell, Longhorn is already tons more secure than Linux given it's not available.
If a company releases a product with the same vulnerability as another company when that vulnerability was rather highly publicized (recently or otherwise), I tend to question that company on security. Part of security is being aware when exploits exist and taking preemptive action when possible. Clearly AOL/Netscape failed in this regard.
If this logic holds (ie, enough people buy it), Nintendo can stretch it a bit further by advertising their GBA/Nintendo DS system as backwards compatible with the SNES and NES.
At some level for any node to send information to any other node, it has to be aware of what information is being requested. This means, some identifier is being used to request the information. Because of the distributed nature of freenet, this further means that the identifier is indeed something complete enough that either directly be usable to read what is being requested or that it is possible to use the information to locate the full address of the requested information.
A combination of these means it should be possible to track every site that is requested through one's machine and that it should equally be possible to deny any of the blocks associated with the sites one visits and dislikes by stating they don't exist (as well as to delete the blocks from the store, obviously). Further, it's possible to keep a list of such blocks on a public website so others can use it as a basis for blocking content.
Freenet does take steps to try to prevent it from being clear what's all in the store. And Freenet takes steps to have deniability that one requests a file (there's the defense that someone else requested it, and you're simply a node to that end). But as far as I'm aware there's no way that traffic analysis at some layer (probably in the client after decryption) on either side of a connection couldn't be used to effective track what's being requested or use such information to block content one doesn't like.
The only really important thing that cryptography comes into play is in ensuring that the content is indeed what you requested and not a poisoned request. But I doubt you'd claim simple hashes in an email message somehow stop a mail router from dropping the email message based on its content.
You're right. It's just against the spirit of Freenet. Freenet is about complete freedom of speech. That means they've designed and generally make it non-trivial to block content, as any sizeable filtering of content on freenet greatly hinders the availability of that content. So filtering isn't included because of censors in the world (not you).
Now image going to a seller of just apple pies and saying, "You know, I really like your pies flaky crust, but could you sell them all with cherry instead?" Now, of course you can ask, but to act like the apple pie seller is somehow arrogant or misguided to only sell what they've specifically set out to sell is arrogant and misguided. This is the same when people complain about the GPL's "viral" nature and act like software should be deGPLed just because they're uncomfortable with what that means. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it to. So long as no force/coercion is placed upon you to use GPL software, eat those apple pies, or use freenet, that's the end of it from a fairness/legal perspective
But, we live in a free world. That means that if you want to, you can make a freenet clone that lets you filter out things. You could also alter your freenet client to filter out things (the source is available, which should make this task a good bit easier than it would otherwise be); I'd discourage making it compatible with freenet, though, as doing so would almost certainly harm freenet. You could form/join a freenet-filter fork. I'm sure there's a good many people who want to filter and are willing/able to help.
In that regard, good luck with whatever your plan. Just don't be surprised that freenet doesn't change to suit your wants.
You may be right that with MS and Apple commodity software that you already own that it's better to hack your own machine than to attack one you have no permission to attack; in fact, in such cases you can exploit your own machine, hand them a bug report, and then further release the exploit to the public if they don't fix it in a reasonable time.
But what about software you don't own (like the HS's server software) or is unique? Should the student have recreated/bought the software first, then found an exploit because he had a hunch? Even finding the exploit would be illegal (a misuse of the software to gain unauthorized access) if you don't own it. While I certainly agree that where there's the reasonable possibility of finding exploits without commiting an illegal act, it should be the legal standard. But it doesn't right/appropriate to set the same standard on a system which you could not reasonably have used another technique to discover and try to help correct the problem. It seems analogous to pointing out that a bank's window's locks are defective and being held for some crime.
b) Apple is under no obligation to give anything at all to the KHTML team (only to those who got their browser as part of a Mac).
I wasn't aware that Apple was including the full source code of Safari every time they distributed it to users. If they were, then the KHTML team could simply d/l a copy; if one on the KHTML team owns a Mac, all the more clear the obligation.
Now, if Apple isn't releasing source code every time, then they must fall under 3b, requiring a written notice to offer source code to anyone who asks. So, if KHTML team asks, Apple is obligated to reply with the source code.
Your other two points are quite valid, though. And I'd assume (c) was partially an oversight and partially a realization that most hackers wouldn't keep much of a record. The last thing I think that would be wanted is to dissuade authors by making it even more difficult to be compliant--I'm sure at least some of my programs aren't properly GPLed because they don't print out notification at runtime or aren't properly documented when changes were made.
Metric is about using base 10. 10 is 10^1. Obviously so long as bits are bits the whole system won't be perfectly metric, but look at my talk about kilobits. It's not clear in communication if that translates into 8bits/byte or 10bits/byte (two "wasted" on communication). Perhaps if bytes were 10-bits there'd be even more push to reference everything as powers of 10 (like, for example, producing RAM components). And maybe then we'd know that it's definitely 10bits/byte when talking about communication but they'd be forced to advertise the overhead of the communication layer separately. As it stands now, they can just hide behind the fact that no one seems to want to use a consistent value, so they can just further confuse the figures for whatever their agenda is.
But yea, this does nothing for the maximal containing value of data storage. I don't think anyone has proposed a ten-state bit because then it'd be even nastier to design hardware (they'd end up using an array of 5 binary-bits everywhere) or program. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to standardize everything else to multiples of 10, right?
The funny thing is, while kilo, mega, and giga are all metric prefixes in computers when it comes to storage they've all meant 2^(10*n) for n = 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Now, kilobit might mean 1024 bits or 1000 bits, depending on if it's storage or communication, respectively. This is all true because everyone pretty quickly accepted the usage to mean such. Modern computers weren't designed under metric standards (8-bit bytes, not 10-bit bytes as the standard, for example).
The simple fact is that at some point harddrive manufacturers all decided to start labelling storage in powers of 1000 instead of powers of 1024 (compare this to RAM which still uses powers of 1024). This wasn't something that began from the start but was solely a PR move to make the storage space sound bigger. Even when Windows, Linux, etc continued to use MB to mean 2^20 bytes, HD manufacturers left it up to OS makers to try to explain exactly why they're newly bought HD has less reported space. It's not even like HD makers can claim it makes any real sense for computers given that every modern filesystem uses clusters that are a power of 2.
It's only years later that a binary standard was created to try to remove the confusion. And while you might be willing to switch to using these new measurements, the fact is that HD makers won't switch to these new units precisely because they don't care if it confuses the end user when the raw number in GiBs is less than than the raw number in GBs reported on the sticker. The only real surprise is that more HD makers haven't switched to reporting bits of storage to inflate the numbers even more.
Point me to HD makers who report space in GiBs, and I'll reconsider my position that HD makers are a group of deceptive pricks.
1) Adobe will have much less chance of making money on the Linux market, because the Gimp is preinstalled on so many machines. This breaks the 3rd party market on Linux machines. This also has the implication that 3rd party developers (e.g. Adobe/MacroMedia, discreet, etc) have less reasons to support free OSs and more and more reasons to support MS only and eventually Apple.
Except MS seems to be focused on taking over every existing market for Windows and either integrating it for free in the OS or selling it as a cheap bundle to OEMs. But, yes, I'm sure Adobe/MacroMedia are just dying to further tie themselves to MS even though there's still a lot of people who use Photoshop and probably won't switch so long as Adobe keeps putting out a product they like, regardless of the cost. But, that sort of leads to your second point.
2) MS will never be able to compete with that just because (rightly) it cannot bundle applications in the OS.
Actually, MS can bundle applications in the OS. Look at IE and WMP. Sure, the EU is forcing MS to release a WMP-free version at a lower price, but do you really think the EU is going to push that for every new app they add? In the US the punishment period against MS will shortly be over, and I'm sure they're dreaming of all sorts of ways to further cement their market. And that leads into..
3) Contradicting #2, MS could eventually bundle a good graphics application in the OS. Whenever Adobe sue them, they'll go in court and say : "hey every other OS have a graphics app in the OS.. this GIMP thingy.. Why they can and we cannot ?"
That might be a good excuse, but the real reason Adobe would have to sue MS is the same reason Netscape had to MS, that is if MS uses its monopolistic power to prevent Adobe products from being OEM installed. Now, given that most (all?) Adobe products are not OEM installed, there's really little point for Adobe to try to sue MS. The only thing Adobe really has to worry about is MS's Metro, which could hypothetically make the PDF format obsolete (though given the whole reason for PDF, portability, that seems unlikely).
Adobe's Photoshop is still well known, and the GIMP is far from replacing it function wise. There's only two things Adobe (and MS) have to worry about: their software looking less and less worth the money because of free alternatives and the ideology of free software taking hold. The first is their own fault and the latter would make the whole focus on Adobe and other proprietary software moot.
If you doubt bundling is a problem, answer this question..
How many people buy Opera on Linux when they have Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla and another 5 o 6 browsers all preinstalled ? At least, on Windows, IE is so fu**ed up that someone will buy it anyway..
If you've checked the stats on web browser usage you'll notice that IE still has in the 85%+ percentile usage. It's Firefox user on Windows primarily (and secondarily Safari users) who have pushed this percentage down so low. And there's a "free" adware version of Opera that's been around a long time for Linux and Windows. So, really if it were all about price and availability then it should be expected that Firefox and Opera together (with Opera likely being in the lead being around longer in a consistently useful form) sharing second place. Clearly there's something more to it than bundling or price.
The truth is, word of mouth is a powerful thing. So is brand recognition. Why else do you think MS forced OEMs back in '96-97 to not include Netscape Navigator/Communicator? The whole point was to force people to try their browser instead of buying the computer that cost $10 more and using the web browser word of mouth suggested was the best.
Now, in the long run I agree that bundling is a problem since at some point the collection of $10 duplicate function software is too much for the budget conscious buyer, but that's just as true when it comes to paying for th
The probelm is stallman thinks HIS/GNU's contribution is/was more important than any others. So he insists that it be GNULinux,
Uh, if he thought his contribution was more important than any others, wouldn't he be simply calling it "GNU" instead of GNU/Linux or GNU/Solaris or GNU/Whatever? As others have stated, he's being pedantic. When most (all?) people speak of Linux as an OS, they're speaking of GNU/Linux. For desktop users, X/GNU/Linux would be even more correct. But find someone who uses Linux without GNU and you'll find the exceptional case (Linux embedded seems an example where possibly only gcc is used of gnu; has Stallman every tried to label it GNU/Linux embedded?). The same can't be said for those who don't use X, KDE, etc (look at the tons of servers).
So, while certainly it is a bit of Stallman blowing his own horn, he's also being rather correct in stating that GNU/Linux is what most people hold true and dear to their heart when they think of any Linux distro.
Add to that the fact that anyone who disagrees with him is considered to have a moral defect
Considered by whom? You? Himself? If you think Stallman thinks that you going against his morals is a moral defect, well congratulations on your understanding of what morality is defined as. Tolerance of others isn't about accepting that your morality could be wrong (though that's one way people achieve it--such really leaves one without much morality); tolerance of others is not taking a stick upside someone's head even though you think they're wrong. So, even if Stallman were to think you were morally inferior, it really doesn't matter much since Stallman is damn well tolerant of it.
The people who are the real maniacs are the intolerant people, the ones who consistently try to use force by law to stop people from doing things because they find it morally repugnant. This includes people of the right and left, who want to stop people using drugs, buying guns, or running around naked. To think just because you and someone else disagree over a moral issue makes the other person a maniac defines a very small set of non-maniacs. I think that's actually a very sad, and unproductive, way of viewing things.
You actually think it's okay for a company to release exploit info if they're going to get sufficient PR for it?
If by okay you mean it should be legal, yes. If by okay you mean it should be encouraged, sure. I'd appreciate it if a proper advisory was published at least a day before the exploit was released. But like I said, it's okay legally to print it anytime.
And no, the advisory wouldn't have made this security company's announcement moot. Their announcement contained specifics MS doesn't put in their advisories, like explicit steps to exploit.
You obviously don't understand what an advisory is. A proper advisory list steps to avoid being exploited. This might be as simple as blocking a port or as deep as disabling a service which one needs. As such, a proper advisory by MS would mean that those who took steps to avoid being exploited would not be exploited even if the security company released details about the exploit. Of course, for those unwilling to disable services the release of the exploit doesn't help them, though it might not hurt them any if the exploit is already well known by black hats or other exploits exist which are more convenient to use.
And the company not releasing the exploit info earlier wasn't a favor to MS, it was a favor to us all. A big favor to those who use MS machines and smaller favor to others who would have been affected by a worm circulating the internet or more spam from owned machines.
Just because it was a big favor to everyone doesn't mean it wasn't a favor to MS. MS PR uses the public exploit to patch time as a statistic to try to make their software look better. At the same time, if the company hadn't release the exploit ever there's nothing to have kept MS from silently patching the exploit (like I'm sure it silently patches exploits it finds) without ever making it known there was ever a problem.
Either way, keeping silent two days before the fix is just greedy. It's a PR grab, get the thunder before it goes away. This kind of "I'll get mine, others be damned" hurts us all.
No doubt it's a PR grab, just as sleazy as MS PR. You don't see me calling for an end to MS PR, do you? That doesn't mean I don't criticize MS and MS PR for not doing a better job in the first place to mitigate risk for people. Having stated that, I would love to see the security company releasing a proper advisory and possibly advise replacement software such that the exploit would be moot. If you have any other suggestions on ways the security company could have maximized the security of users, I'm all ears. Obscurity, in this situation, doesn't maximize security.
if I were Microsoft I would have been very angry that a security company had clearly released security hole information strictly for the PR value
But that's precisely because the good PR for the security company is bad PR for MS, since MS PR has constantly been pushing the belief that the time between exploits being public and patching is really small. The fact is, the security company not releasing the exploit information earlier was a favor to MS. The actual exploit was MS's fault and existed regardless of if the security company had said anything. The fact is, MS should have released an advisory and patch as soon as possible to mitigate damage for users (in your example the advisory would have made the security company's announcement moot).
If MS and MS PR worked harder to do what was best for the user, there'd likely be a lot less bitching by/. geeks, including me. Stats look good the PHB, and that's all MS PR really seems to care about. Is it any wonder why/. geeks might be a little upset about how little truth the stats really convey or have little sympathy when MS complains as if someone else is to blame for them not stepping up and dealing with problems as soon as possible, be-damned how bad the stats might look.
Driving isn't a right, it's a priviledge. There's nothing logicallly from stopping any state between Maine and California from rejecting your drivers license and arresting you for unlawful operation of a vehicle--if it works on marriage licenses, I don't see why it wouldn't work on drivers licenses.
That said, you could take public transportation (commercial airlines would seem to count given that the federal government is providing security). But "public" private airlines, including most bus services, would be subject to whatever rules they decide on, including if they decide to require checking your ID to get on--assumedly they're not doing it as a service to the government in trade for something else. So, either prepare in the future to window shop a lot for whatever private bus services don't require this ID card (and it won't be many, since most people will give their identity to feel safer) or save up your cash and charter a personal travel plan.
But you're right, there will almost certainly still be a way to travel across the US without ever giving out your ID. Just don't be surprised when you have to dump bucket loads to actually do it or a willingness to bike/walk the whole way.
I talked to an ex-science teacher and his whole argument came down to "Occam's Razor". But how is this different from having your whole argument coming down to believing that "A God exists"? They both something that you are guiding your life on, either of which you really can't prove is correct/true/THE TRUTH.
You seem to have missed the argument. Assume for a moment there's a God. Then, then Universe as it is shown exists. And you know birds fly because you observe it. The argument of Occam's Razor is not really an explanation on why you should believe something is true but more why the description of something should be as simple as possible. You could say birds fly. Or you could say that one species flies, another has invisible anti-gravity units, another transforms itself to be buoyant to the appropriate amount to swim, etc.
It's much simpler to describe all bird flight as being the result of a low density and relying on the Bernoulli principle. This doesn't mean that's what's actually happening. It does mean that all the evidence fits. The second more evidence contradicts this, current theories will be altered.
Having stated all that, many times people will believe in God--from which as a side-effect means believing what you see--yet at the same time deny evidence presented before them because it contradicts with their definition of God and the Bible. Such denial really shows a fault in their own belief system. If one want to use Occam's Razor, one can either take this to mean that the truth is there is no God or there's a God who was being less literal and more metaphorical when making the Bible (be it directly or indirectly, as one believe).
None of this would mean recanting the plainly obvious.
Musicians have concerts. Artists have art exhibits and the ability to sell original works of art for money; they can also do comics, be funded by the rich (that was an old favorite), or simply do art as a hobby. Authors can write serials in the newspaper or other publications of the sort. They can also be paid to publicize their work by going to book-signing conventions. Maybe they can sell their ideas as movie scripts or the like. Programmers can work in companies doing IT or IS or whatever.
The fact is, rockstars are a relatively recent aberration (basically since the start of movies). I can't off the top of my head think of a general copyrighted category that there isn't a field available now that relies very little on actual copyright. Most of it is daily works where piracy wouldn't get you very much (since actually pirating whole newspapers, manga, etc is rather klunky at best). Yes, I don't doubt that a lack of copyright would mean less artists; some artist do it purely for the money while others are only able to because of the money.
So, the truth is 90%+ of creators could right now get a for-hire job (if they don't have one already to pay the bills). I wouldn't venture to guess what the exact percentage is. But clearly it's not nearly remotely a travesty if creators no longer had copyright to rely on. The only ones who have to really fear are all the managers and book publishers and whatever who may be made obsolete. The internet might make that happen anyways.
>>Some people prefer live music and think money paid for a live show is the only real compensation music artists should expect.
>Creating songs is work. A hit isn't written in ten minutes (usually). They should be compensated. Radio stations make money from advertisers when the encourage people to listen to the music they play. Should the artist not be compensated for that. In a different scenario, I am a programmer; Should I be paid only if my programs are run? or should my employer pay me to write them in the first place.
Creating a program is work. Good software isn't written in ten minutes (usually). Would you also state that all programmers should be compensated?
And speaking of programmers, I think your analogy is obviously flawed. Musicians are more than just the creators of songs (programmers), they're also the player of songs (computers/IT) that make it work. Now, IT staff is paid on a regular basis because they're not reproduceable. While commodity software is sold very cheaply (OSS is probably the best example of this) and minus some actual cost for setup and the computer to run it, using such software is almost free.
The fact is that the biggest group that has any legitimate fear of a lack of copyright, which is what would be required for the original hypothesis, is programmers precisely because unlike musicians they can't just go down to every pub or restaurant and try to get a gig. Yet, Richard Stallman and a lot of people, including me, realize that there's still a lot of "niche" jobs in producing all the software that's out there as there's such a great "need" for it--RMS's take on the whole morality of it is a separate issue, in my mind.
The fact is, if anything the selling of CDs at $10/album is hurting most musicians. Part of the reason in the past for eating out was for the live entertainment. Places paying hourly royalties to the RIAA to play muzak or the like does nothing but benefit them and some unnamed artists. I want musicians who can play at the drop of a hat. I want musicians who can improvise and have real visible talent. It doesn't seem to me like it's demanding to much to have the free market at work, where the service of performing, which has real visible worth, is what is most handsomely rewarded.
So someone in the scouting organization is simply pointing out to these kids that disregarding copyrights is illegal and unethical.
Illegal, yes. Unethical? Disregarding copyright is not fundamental unethical. Murder is. Theft is. The only way I can see it at all unethical is if one were to pretend that which they pirated was legal bought, which is something like socially cheating. I doubt many people would begin to claim they spent tons of money on all their pirated songs, movies, and games.
No, I think it's a bit different than that. I think free will as being defined as the ability to make choices is a bit flawed. In reality, I'd suggest that free will is closer to programmed behavior. In that context, God could give us free will and as a result program us to fail. That, in itself, would just make God a mean spirited God. But, God also has on several occasions interfered with man. This is analogous to mid-experiment killing off half your specimens because you don't like how the results are turning out. This is where I'd say God is no longer allowing man to have free will. So long as it's a closed system, man can make "choices" and are effectively programmed to do good/evil, but God interfering changes the results to however God pleases, and there's no way that can be explained as covered under free will.
On a side note, because God is supposedly omniscient, he could have just created man and the universe in such a way that it would not be necessary for himself to interfere. So, either God isn't omniscient as you suggest, or maybe God is a really big asshole who likes to show up and save the day from time to time, all of the misery being a product of his design.
The most ironic part about the flood killing in Noah's time is that such would conceivably be justification for abortion. I mean, the only logical basis for why God has any right to go about killing so many people is because he's their father and created them, so he has a right to destroy them. By that logic, a pregnant woman and the father created the fetus and therefore have a right to destroy it (include comments about the wicked acts of the unborn baby, as necessary--or "original sin" conceivably). If human life is so important, why is it okay for God to go about killing some and not saving others from harm? Oh well..
Well, it's interesting to know there's a way to access the restricted MSI packages then. Btw, you wouldn't happen to know how to do something like provide ICS dial-up access without logging in, would you? Or how about sharing a drive through smb as a non-Admin? How about just fiddling with ICS settings as a non-Admin?
As for your sudo su - example, while you're right that some program could try to attack all terminals and hope that one of them is root, I was thinking more of a sudo ran process that you'd otherwise trust a user to access. Processing X events allows a program to be more robust against crazy input/buffer overflows, while that Admin privileged virus scanner program with the text box can have it's text box directly filled (and I'm sure the program would be eventually notified). Obviously an Admin access cmd.exe or root shell are equally unsafe; that should be obvious to most people, and they'd know not to give a user they don't trust access to such.
As for cool switch/fast switch, I'm sorry I mixed the two up as I haven't associated them well without (like usb hispeed and full speed, though at least there was a/. "debate" about that which has made me remember that hispeed isn't full speed). As for turning on multiple login sessions at once, I forget where the setting to turn that on is.. I want to say it's around the Remote Administration, but that doesn't sound right. The only other suggested place to look is around the Users control panel item.
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How many people have said, "We must believe in God, for if we do, and he does not exist, nothing happens. But if we do not believe in him, and he does exist, then we are doomed." But, it's fairly clear he does not exist.
Two points. One, back in the old days every single country/kingdom had its own God, as a side effect of each King being God's chosen and making an extended set of rules for what God was. To that end, there's actually multiple Gods one could believe in, now called denominations (and created under a different set of circumstances). The point is, simply believing in a God doesn't mean you'll believe in the right one. And virtually all denominations are exclusive. So, this idea of believing in a God to avoid punishment simply won't work because you can't be sure you'll pick the right one.
Two, religion is by definition the supernatural. All proof is natural. So, there's no way proof can prove or disprove the supernatural. Of course, just because God might exist doesn't mean you should follow him, even if you were able to guess the right religion. It takes a certain bit of character to look at God's acts, determine that there's things you find flawed (humanly, so), and be willing to take any sort of punishment from God because it would be amoral to simply buckle under the threat of eternal damnation to follow an unjust leader.
So, instead of framing the question as one of trying to answer the unprovable, one can simply refuse to follow a God on moral grounds. To me, that seems a firmer foundation.
You're right about English being quirky (I wouldn't exactly call it broken), but clearly Polish and polish are composed of different characters, so without special provisions there's no reason why they should be treated the same. Many computer languages at a fundamental level supports variable creation out of a set of characters, normally letters (upper and lower) and numbers. But, there's nothing to stop a person from composing a computer language that only excepts kanji, for instance.
The fact is, the only real expectation you should have of a compiler is that it adheres to the language it's meant to compile; you shouldn't expect German to follow the exact same case rules as English--that's either ignorance or arrogance. It's equally silly to expect a computer language to use punctuation in the exact same way as a human language. All human languages, AFAIK, are context sensitive, but computer languages are merely context free. In simple terms, human languages are an order more complex than computer languages. It is for this reason that we've still not created a perfect bablefish, but it's perfectly possible to translate one general purpose language to another--language-dependent binary libraries can hinder this translation, of course.
This last point means that trying to make a computer language that approached a human language would require an order magnitude more time and complexity to make a compiler to implement it. At the same time, programs written in such a language would almost certainly not do exactly what you want because of the ambiguity of human languages. So, it seems a bit silly to complain about computer languages not adhering to some ambiguous standard on what you consider a good language. But perhaps you'd be happy if a compromise was reached and you simply couldn't enter in upper case for variables (or filenames)?
Remember that getting the prototype up and running is the interesting bit - getting it polished, fully QAed and packaged is the dull slog that no-one really wants to do.
Yea, it almost sounds like the first part is what the OSS/outside proprietary company does and the latter is what the in-house programmers are paid to do. In fact, that covers the full cycle for in-house software and external (ie, boxed) software.
So, some/most those projects that start out incomplete on sourceforge will become more complete as a side effect of in-house developers contributing back to the main project. And those projects will always be incomplete for the same reason all other software is incomplete: external software is never exactly what you need, so there's always those final steps necessary to customize it for the specific task.
Ah, security through unavailability. So, by your logic it's perfectly okay for MS to release Windows Longhorn with vulnerabilities existent in the original build of Windows XP then release fix patches the next day, pretending that somehow makes this makes MS more responsive to security than they were with XP? Hell, Longhorn is already tons more secure than Linux given it's not available.
If a company releases a product with the same vulnerability as another company when that vulnerability was rather highly publicized (recently or otherwise), I tend to question that company on security. Part of security is being aware when exploits exist and taking preemptive action when possible. Clearly AOL/Netscape failed in this regard.
If this logic holds (ie, enough people buy it), Nintendo can stretch it a bit further by advertising their GBA/Nintendo DS system as backwards compatible with the SNES and NES.
Is that in DS or PSP units?
At some level for any node to send information to any other node, it has to be aware of what information is being requested. This means, some identifier is being used to request the information. Because of the distributed nature of freenet, this further means that the identifier is indeed something complete enough that either directly be usable to read what is being requested or that it is possible to use the information to locate the full address of the requested information.
A combination of these means it should be possible to track every site that is requested through one's machine and that it should equally be possible to deny any of the blocks associated with the sites one visits and dislikes by stating they don't exist (as well as to delete the blocks from the store, obviously). Further, it's possible to keep a list of such blocks on a public website so others can use it as a basis for blocking content.
Freenet does take steps to try to prevent it from being clear what's all in the store. And Freenet takes steps to have deniability that one requests a file (there's the defense that someone else requested it, and you're simply a node to that end). But as far as I'm aware there's no way that traffic analysis at some layer (probably in the client after decryption) on either side of a connection couldn't be used to effective track what's being requested or use such information to block content one doesn't like.
The only really important thing that cryptography comes into play is in ensuring that the content is indeed what you requested and not a poisoned request. But I doubt you'd claim simple hashes in an email message somehow stop a mail router from dropping the email message based on its content.
You're right. It's just against the spirit of Freenet. Freenet is about complete freedom of speech. That means they've designed and generally make it non-trivial to block content, as any sizeable filtering of content on freenet greatly hinders the availability of that content. So filtering isn't included because of censors in the world (not you).
Now image going to a seller of just apple pies and saying, "You know, I really like your pies flaky crust, but could you sell them all with cherry instead?" Now, of course you can ask, but to act like the apple pie seller is somehow arrogant or misguided to only sell what they've specifically set out to sell is arrogant and misguided. This is the same when people complain about the GPL's "viral" nature and act like software should be deGPLed just because they're uncomfortable with what that means. Sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it to. So long as no force/coercion is placed upon you to use GPL software, eat those apple pies, or use freenet, that's the end of it from a fairness/legal perspective
But, we live in a free world. That means that if you want to, you can make a freenet clone that lets you filter out things. You could also alter your freenet client to filter out things (the source is available, which should make this task a good bit easier than it would otherwise be); I'd discourage making it compatible with freenet, though, as doing so would almost certainly harm freenet. You could form/join a freenet-filter fork. I'm sure there's a good many people who want to filter and are willing/able to help.
In that regard, good luck with whatever your plan. Just don't be surprised that freenet doesn't change to suit your wants.
You may be right that with MS and Apple commodity software that you already own that it's better to hack your own machine than to attack one you have no permission to attack; in fact, in such cases you can exploit your own machine, hand them a bug report, and then further release the exploit to the public if they don't fix it in a reasonable time.
But what about software you don't own (like the HS's server software) or is unique? Should the student have recreated/bought the software first, then found an exploit because he had a hunch? Even finding the exploit would be illegal (a misuse of the software to gain unauthorized access) if you don't own it. While I certainly agree that where there's the reasonable possibility of finding exploits without commiting an illegal act, it should be the legal standard. But it doesn't right/appropriate to set the same standard on a system which you could not reasonably have used another technique to discover and try to help correct the problem. It seems analogous to pointing out that a bank's window's locks are defective and being held for some crime.
b) Apple is under no obligation to give anything at all to the KHTML team (only to those who got their browser as part of a Mac).
I wasn't aware that Apple was including the full source code of Safari every time they distributed it to users. If they were, then the KHTML team could simply d/l a copy; if one on the KHTML team owns a Mac, all the more clear the obligation.
Now, if Apple isn't releasing source code every time, then they must fall under 3b, requiring a written notice to offer source code to anyone who asks. So, if KHTML team asks, Apple is obligated to reply with the source code.
Your other two points are quite valid, though. And I'd assume (c) was partially an oversight and partially a realization that most hackers wouldn't keep much of a record. The last thing I think that would be wanted is to dissuade authors by making it even more difficult to be compliant--I'm sure at least some of my programs aren't properly GPLed because they don't print out notification at runtime or aren't properly documented when changes were made.
Metric is about using base 10. 10 is 10^1. Obviously so long as bits are bits the whole system won't be perfectly metric, but look at my talk about kilobits. It's not clear in communication if that translates into 8bits/byte or 10bits/byte (two "wasted" on communication). Perhaps if bytes were 10-bits there'd be even more push to reference everything as powers of 10 (like, for example, producing RAM components). And maybe then we'd know that it's definitely 10bits/byte when talking about communication but they'd be forced to advertise the overhead of the communication layer separately. As it stands now, they can just hide behind the fact that no one seems to want to use a consistent value, so they can just further confuse the figures for whatever their agenda is.
But yea, this does nothing for the maximal containing value of data storage. I don't think anyone has proposed a ten-state bit because then it'd be even nastier to design hardware (they'd end up using an array of 5 binary-bits everywhere) or program. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to standardize everything else to multiples of 10, right?
The funny thing is, while kilo, mega, and giga are all metric prefixes in computers when it comes to storage they've all meant 2^(10*n) for n = 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Now, kilobit might mean 1024 bits or 1000 bits, depending on if it's storage or communication, respectively. This is all true because everyone pretty quickly accepted the usage to mean such. Modern computers weren't designed under metric standards (8-bit bytes, not 10-bit bytes as the standard, for example).
The simple fact is that at some point harddrive manufacturers all decided to start labelling storage in powers of 1000 instead of powers of 1024 (compare this to RAM which still uses powers of 1024). This wasn't something that began from the start but was solely a PR move to make the storage space sound bigger. Even when Windows, Linux, etc continued to use MB to mean 2^20 bytes, HD manufacturers left it up to OS makers to try to explain exactly why they're newly bought HD has less reported space. It's not even like HD makers can claim it makes any real sense for computers given that every modern filesystem uses clusters that are a power of 2.
It's only years later that a binary standard was created to try to remove the confusion. And while you might be willing to switch to using these new measurements, the fact is that HD makers won't switch to these new units precisely because they don't care if it confuses the end user when the raw number in GiBs is less than than the raw number in GBs reported on the sticker. The only real surprise is that more HD makers haven't switched to reporting bits of storage to inflate the numbers even more.
Point me to HD makers who report space in GiBs, and I'll reconsider my position that HD makers are a group of deceptive pricks.
1) Adobe will have much less chance of making money on the Linux market, because the Gimp is preinstalled on so many machines. This breaks the 3rd party market on Linux machines. This also has the implication that 3rd party developers (e.g. Adobe/MacroMedia, discreet, etc) have less reasons to support free OSs and more and more reasons to support MS only and eventually Apple.
Except MS seems to be focused on taking over every existing market for Windows and either integrating it for free in the OS or selling it as a cheap bundle to OEMs. But, yes, I'm sure Adobe/MacroMedia are just dying to further tie themselves to MS even though there's still a lot of people who use Photoshop and probably won't switch so long as Adobe keeps putting out a product they like, regardless of the cost. But, that sort of leads to your second point.
2) MS will never be able to compete with that just because (rightly) it cannot bundle applications in the OS.
Actually, MS can bundle applications in the OS. Look at IE and WMP. Sure, the EU is forcing MS to release a WMP-free version at a lower price, but do you really think the EU is going to push that for every new app they add? In the US the punishment period against MS will shortly be over, and I'm sure they're dreaming of all sorts of ways to further cement their market. And that leads into..
3) Contradicting #2, MS could eventually bundle a good graphics application in the OS. Whenever Adobe sue them, they'll go in court and say : "hey every other OS have a graphics app in the OS.. this GIMP thingy.. Why they can and we cannot ?"
That might be a good excuse, but the real reason Adobe would have to sue MS is the same reason Netscape had to MS, that is if MS uses its monopolistic power to prevent Adobe products from being OEM installed. Now, given that most (all?) Adobe products are not OEM installed, there's really little point for Adobe to try to sue MS. The only thing Adobe really has to worry about is MS's Metro, which could hypothetically make the PDF format obsolete (though given the whole reason for PDF, portability, that seems unlikely).
Adobe's Photoshop is still well known, and the GIMP is far from replacing it function wise. There's only two things Adobe (and MS) have to worry about: their software looking less and less worth the money because of free alternatives and the ideology of free software taking hold. The first is their own fault and the latter would make the whole focus on Adobe and other proprietary software moot.
If you doubt bundling is a problem, answer this question..
How many people buy Opera on Linux when they have Firefox, Konqueror, Galeon, Mozilla and another 5 o 6 browsers all preinstalled ?
At least, on Windows, IE is so fu**ed up that someone will buy it anyway..
If you've checked the stats on web browser usage you'll notice that IE still has in the 85%+ percentile usage. It's Firefox user on Windows primarily (and secondarily Safari users) who have pushed this percentage down so low. And there's a "free" adware version of Opera that's been around a long time for Linux and Windows. So, really if it were all about price and availability then it should be expected that Firefox and Opera together (with Opera likely being in the lead being around longer in a consistently useful form) sharing second place. Clearly there's something more to it than bundling or price.
The truth is, word of mouth is a powerful thing. So is brand recognition. Why else do you think MS forced OEMs back in '96-97 to not include Netscape Navigator/Communicator? The whole point was to force people to try their browser instead of buying the computer that cost $10 more and using the web browser word of mouth suggested was the best.
Now, in the long run I agree that bundling is a problem since at some point the collection of $10 duplicate function software is too much for the budget conscious buyer, but that's just as true when it comes to paying for th
The probelm is stallman thinks HIS/GNU's contribution is/was more important than any others. So he insists that it be GNULinux,
Uh, if he thought his contribution was more important than any others, wouldn't he be simply calling it "GNU" instead of GNU/Linux or GNU/Solaris or GNU/Whatever? As others have stated, he's being pedantic. When most (all?) people speak of Linux as an OS, they're speaking of GNU/Linux. For desktop users, X/GNU/Linux would be even more correct. But find someone who uses Linux without GNU and you'll find the exceptional case (Linux embedded seems an example where possibly only gcc is used of gnu; has Stallman every tried to label it GNU/Linux embedded?). The same can't be said for those who don't use X, KDE, etc (look at the tons of servers).
So, while certainly it is a bit of Stallman blowing his own horn, he's also being rather correct in stating that GNU/Linux is what most people hold true and dear to their heart when they think of any Linux distro.
Add to that the fact that anyone who disagrees with him is considered to have a moral defect
Considered by whom? You? Himself? If you think Stallman thinks that you going against his morals is a moral defect, well congratulations on your understanding of what morality is defined as. Tolerance of others isn't about accepting that your morality could be wrong (though that's one way people achieve it--such really leaves one without much morality); tolerance of others is not taking a stick upside someone's head even though you think they're wrong. So, even if Stallman were to think you were morally inferior, it really doesn't matter much since Stallman is damn well tolerant of it.
The people who are the real maniacs are the intolerant people, the ones who consistently try to use force by law to stop people from doing things because they find it morally repugnant. This includes people of the right and left, who want to stop people using drugs, buying guns, or running around naked. To think just because you and someone else disagree over a moral issue makes the other person a maniac defines a very small set of non-maniacs. I think that's actually a very sad, and unproductive, way of viewing things.
You actually think it's okay for a company to release exploit info if they're going to get sufficient PR for it?
If by okay you mean it should be legal, yes. If by okay you mean it should be encouraged, sure. I'd appreciate it if a proper advisory was published at least a day before the exploit was released. But like I said, it's okay legally to print it anytime.
And no, the advisory wouldn't have made this security company's announcement moot. Their announcement contained specifics MS doesn't put in their advisories, like explicit steps to exploit.
You obviously don't understand what an advisory is. A proper advisory list steps to avoid being exploited. This might be as simple as blocking a port or as deep as disabling a service which one needs. As such, a proper advisory by MS would mean that those who took steps to avoid being exploited would not be exploited even if the security company released details about the exploit. Of course, for those unwilling to disable services the release of the exploit doesn't help them, though it might not hurt them any if the exploit is already well known by black hats or other exploits exist which are more convenient to use.
And the company not releasing the exploit info earlier wasn't a favor to MS, it was a favor to us all. A big favor to those who use MS machines and smaller favor to others who would have been affected by a worm circulating the internet or more spam from owned machines.
Just because it was a big favor to everyone doesn't mean it wasn't a favor to MS. MS PR uses the public exploit to patch time as a statistic to try to make their software look better. At the same time, if the company hadn't release the exploit ever there's nothing to have kept MS from silently patching the exploit (like I'm sure it silently patches exploits it finds) without ever making it known there was ever a problem.
Either way, keeping silent two days before the fix is just greedy. It's a PR grab, get the thunder before it goes away. This kind of "I'll get mine, others be damned" hurts us all.
No doubt it's a PR grab, just as sleazy as MS PR. You don't see me calling for an end to MS PR, do you? That doesn't mean I don't criticize MS and MS PR for not doing a better job in the first place to mitigate risk for people. Having stated that, I would love to see the security company releasing a proper advisory and possibly advise replacement software such that the exploit would be moot. If you have any other suggestions on ways the security company could have maximized the security of users, I'm all ears. Obscurity, in this situation, doesn't maximize security.
if I were Microsoft I would have been very angry that a security company had clearly released security hole information strictly for the PR value
/. geeks, including me. Stats look good the PHB, and that's all MS PR really seems to care about. Is it any wonder why /. geeks might be a little upset about how little truth the stats really convey or have little sympathy when MS complains as if someone else is to blame for them not stepping up and dealing with problems as soon as possible, be-damned how bad the stats might look.
But that's precisely because the good PR for the security company is bad PR for MS, since MS PR has constantly been pushing the belief that the time between exploits being public and patching is really small. The fact is, the security company not releasing the exploit information earlier was a favor to MS. The actual exploit was MS's fault and existed regardless of if the security company had said anything. The fact is, MS should have released an advisory and patch as soon as possible to mitigate damage for users (in your example the advisory would have made the security company's announcement moot).
If MS and MS PR worked harder to do what was best for the user, there'd likely be a lot less bitching by
Driving isn't a right, it's a priviledge. There's nothing logicallly from stopping any state between Maine and California from rejecting your drivers license and arresting you for unlawful operation of a vehicle--if it works on marriage licenses, I don't see why it wouldn't work on drivers licenses.
That said, you could take public transportation (commercial airlines would seem to count given that the federal government is providing security). But "public" private airlines, including most bus services, would be subject to whatever rules they decide on, including if they decide to require checking your ID to get on--assumedly they're not doing it as a service to the government in trade for something else. So, either prepare in the future to window shop a lot for whatever private bus services don't require this ID card (and it won't be many, since most people will give their identity to feel safer) or save up your cash and charter a personal travel plan.
But you're right, there will almost certainly still be a way to travel across the US without ever giving out your ID. Just don't be surprised when you have to dump bucket loads to actually do it or a willingness to bike/walk the whole way.
I talked to an ex-science teacher and his whole argument came down to "Occam's Razor". But how is this different from having your whole argument coming down to believing that "A God exists"? They both something that you are guiding your life on, either of which you really can't prove is correct/true/THE TRUTH.
You seem to have missed the argument. Assume for a moment there's a God. Then, then Universe as it is shown exists. And you know birds fly because you observe it. The argument of Occam's Razor is not really an explanation on why you should believe something is true but more why the description of something should be as simple as possible. You could say birds fly. Or you could say that one species flies, another has invisible anti-gravity units, another transforms itself to be buoyant to the appropriate amount to swim, etc.
It's much simpler to describe all bird flight as being the result of a low density and relying on the Bernoulli principle. This doesn't mean that's what's actually happening. It does mean that all the evidence fits. The second more evidence contradicts this, current theories will be altered.
Having stated all that, many times people will believe in God--from which as a side-effect means believing what you see--yet at the same time deny evidence presented before them because it contradicts with their definition of God and the Bible. Such denial really shows a fault in their own belief system. If one want to use Occam's Razor, one can either take this to mean that the truth is there is no God or there's a God who was being less literal and more metaphorical when making the Bible (be it directly or indirectly, as one believe).
None of this would mean recanting the plainly obvious.
Musicians have concerts. Artists have art exhibits and the ability to sell original works of art for money; they can also do comics, be funded by the rich (that was an old favorite), or simply do art as a hobby. Authors can write serials in the newspaper or other publications of the sort. They can also be paid to publicize their work by going to book-signing conventions. Maybe they can sell their ideas as movie scripts or the like. Programmers can work in companies doing IT or IS or whatever.
The fact is, rockstars are a relatively recent aberration (basically since the start of movies). I can't off the top of my head think of a general copyrighted category that there isn't a field available now that relies very little on actual copyright. Most of it is daily works where piracy wouldn't get you very much (since actually pirating whole newspapers, manga, etc is rather klunky at best). Yes, I don't doubt that a lack of copyright would mean less artists; some artist do it purely for the money while others are only able to because of the money.
So, the truth is 90%+ of creators could right now get a for-hire job (if they don't have one already to pay the bills). I wouldn't venture to guess what the exact percentage is. But clearly it's not nearly remotely a travesty if creators no longer had copyright to rely on. The only ones who have to really fear are all the managers and book publishers and whatever who may be made obsolete. The internet might make that happen anyways.
>>Some people prefer live music and think money paid for a live show is the only real compensation music artists should expect.
>Creating songs is work. A hit isn't written in ten minutes (usually). They should be compensated. Radio stations make money from advertisers when the encourage people to listen to the music they play. Should the artist not be compensated for that. In a different scenario, I am a programmer; Should I be paid only if my programs are run? or should my employer pay me to write them in the first place.
Creating a program is work. Good software isn't written in ten minutes (usually). Would you also state that all programmers should be compensated?
And speaking of programmers, I think your analogy is obviously flawed. Musicians are more than just the creators of songs (programmers), they're also the player of songs (computers/IT) that make it work. Now, IT staff is paid on a regular basis because they're not reproduceable. While commodity software is sold very cheaply (OSS is probably the best example of this) and minus some actual cost for setup and the computer to run it, using such software is almost free.
The fact is that the biggest group that has any legitimate fear of a lack of copyright, which is what would be required for the original hypothesis, is programmers precisely because unlike musicians they can't just go down to every pub or restaurant and try to get a gig. Yet, Richard Stallman and a lot of people, including me, realize that there's still a lot of "niche" jobs in producing all the software that's out there as there's such a great "need" for it--RMS's take on the whole morality of it is a separate issue, in my mind.
The fact is, if anything the selling of CDs at $10/album is hurting most musicians. Part of the reason in the past for eating out was for the live entertainment. Places paying hourly royalties to the RIAA to play muzak or the like does nothing but benefit them and some unnamed artists. I want musicians who can play at the drop of a hat. I want musicians who can improvise and have real visible talent. It doesn't seem to me like it's demanding to much to have the free market at work, where the service of performing, which has real visible worth, is what is most handsomely rewarded.
So someone in the scouting organization is simply pointing out to these kids that disregarding copyrights is illegal and unethical.
Illegal, yes. Unethical? Disregarding copyright is not fundamental unethical. Murder is. Theft is. The only way I can see it at all unethical is if one were to pretend that which they pirated was legal bought, which is something like socially cheating. I doubt many people would begin to claim they spent tons of money on all their pirated songs, movies, and games.
No, I think it's a bit different than that. I think free will as being defined as the ability to make choices is a bit flawed. In reality, I'd suggest that free will is closer to programmed behavior. In that context, God could give us free will and as a result program us to fail. That, in itself, would just make God a mean spirited God. But, God also has on several occasions interfered with man. This is analogous to mid-experiment killing off half your specimens because you don't like how the results are turning out. This is where I'd say God is no longer allowing man to have free will. So long as it's a closed system, man can make "choices" and are effectively programmed to do good/evil, but God interfering changes the results to however God pleases, and there's no way that can be explained as covered under free will.
On a side note, because God is supposedly omniscient, he could have just created man and the universe in such a way that it would not be necessary for himself to interfere. So, either God isn't omniscient as you suggest, or maybe God is a really big asshole who likes to show up and save the day from time to time, all of the misery being a product of his design.
The most ironic part about the flood killing in Noah's time is that such would conceivably be justification for abortion. I mean, the only logical basis for why God has any right to go about killing so many people is because he's their father and created them, so he has a right to destroy them. By that logic, a pregnant woman and the father created the fetus and therefore have a right to destroy it (include comments about the wicked acts of the unborn baby, as necessary--or "original sin" conceivably). If human life is so important, why is it okay for God to go about killing some and not saving others from harm? Oh well..
Well, it's interesting to know there's a way to access the restricted MSI packages then. Btw, you wouldn't happen to know how to do something like provide ICS dial-up access without logging in, would you? Or how about sharing a drive through smb as a non-Admin? How about just fiddling with ICS settings as a non-Admin?
/. "debate" about that which has made me remember that hispeed isn't full speed). As for turning on multiple login sessions at once, I forget where the setting to turn that on is.. I want to say it's around the Remote Administration, but that doesn't sound right. The only other suggested place to look is around the Users control panel item.
As for your sudo su - example, while you're right that some program could try to attack all terminals and hope that one of them is root, I was thinking more of a sudo ran process that you'd otherwise trust a user to access. Processing X events allows a program to be more robust against crazy input/buffer overflows, while that Admin privileged virus scanner program with the text box can have it's text box directly filled (and I'm sure the program would be eventually notified). Obviously an Admin access cmd.exe or root shell are equally unsafe; that should be obvious to most people, and they'd know not to give a user they don't trust access to such.
As for cool switch/fast switch, I'm sorry I mixed the two up as I haven't associated them well without (like usb hispeed and full speed, though at least there was a
Shortcut, yes. Control Panel, no. But yes, as has been stated you can run "runas ... control.exe ". Btw, does that work with Windows Explorer?