it strikes me that far from being the sterile lifeless environments that other non-earth planets are assumed to be, that in fact every planet is likely riddled with life in some form, at a microscopic level at the very least. To assume otherwise is perhaps simply subscribing to that eternal 'truth' that humans believe that they are somehow special in the universe. The ancient greeks, as wise as they were, once believed the earth to be at the very centre of things.
One human may be special to another, but in an almost infinite universe our status of being special looks shaky. Likely 'fairly common' is the best we could ever hope for on a universal scale.
It seems absurd to me the idea that life can only exist in some arbitrary narrow range of conditions? I think we may underestimate that which is life.
Cease and desist what? doing what he wants with his phone? If so I'll take that bet.
They put those conditions so that you get support. If you don't want that support, then why would they care.
It's to protect their bottom line, that's why the genius bar can actually work and why the guru bar can only ever be a poor imitation.
It's like those stickers that say warranty void if removed. It protects from users. Users break shit all the time and then try and blame everyone else but themselves.
I agree NAT and port forwarding aspects will(should) be out the window but I still think firewalls that, say, ringfence subnets will still be of value.
Particularly if its a choice between that and letting machines (more specifically a particular OS) handle their own security. That would be a terrifying thought.
This is an interesting point, I think it is fair to say that modifying of a URL is an intentional act and not an accident?
I'm thinking of a scenario whereby a user modifies a URL say changing a userid to get access to another persons information. Of course the site should prevent this, but if it doesn't can it be said that no liability lies with the user doing the URL modifying?
Not trolling, interested in viewpoints. Sane ones preferably!
I was specifically talking about my customers, who are universally businesses.
In a discussion about the speed of provision to UK homes? You make some interesting points about NTL's business support in 2000-2002 but its a bit of stretch to say that anything you have written applies to Virgin's current residential service!
NTL became blueyonder (who were always outstanding) before they became Virgin. Virgin's support is likely blueyonder's legacy and bears little resemblance to anything NTL ever did. I am quite the opposite in my recommendation to friends and family in that given a choice I would always go for cable over ADSL. Its way faster choose (10, 20 or 50 meg as opposed to 8 !?) and easily as reliable.
"provide stuff like static ip subnets" - you just lost 95% of the population, maybe more. *Most* people just want to download stuff, fast. Thats it. That implies it works (or they arent downloading fast - which is what they want), which implies you don't need support (they want to download fast - not be told why they cant and what to do about it). If your computer won't download because of some shitty firewall you installed or because your bandwidth is being sucked up by some trojan or because the site you are downloading from is crap. Thats not virgin's fault, and they shouldn't have to support you and frankly I feel sorry for them having to deal with these people.
Every day I deal with users telling us that our site is working or that 'everyone' is having a problem, when it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with there hardware, software or local NHS network conditions. I take my hat off to virgin for even bothering to have a support line. The service is rock solid, and if it isn't, then you ringing to moan about it is just wasting their time, they know and they are fixing it.
I assume you don't use virgin, I do, have done for the last 10 years. So I'll take your opinion of their customer support with a pinch of salt.
Yes I take your point. Typically though the average user shops by price then bitches when the product they get is shit. There is a lesson about value that many people have yet to, and may never, learn.
I know about NTL - they merged (got bought out by?) blueyonder. BY cusotmer service was far superior. There was a lot of concern at the time about what was going to happen following the deal, particularly about whether it would ruin support. Support was never the same, but it never became terrible.
Virgin can promise me whatever amount of bandwidth they like (not that they've ever delivered on their advertising from what I hear)
Utter tripe. Compared to *any* ADSL provider they look like paragons of virtue. 8meg ADSL my ass. I have yet to meet anyone that's gotten above 5.
I'll never support them and I'll continue to explain to those that ask my advice (I'm one of the go-to technical people for a lot of friends) exactly why I don't like them and suggest competitors.
That's your choice entirely but to recommend people use a slower service than cable? that sounds like you care more about your personal crusade against virgin than it does about helping your friends choose the service that's best for them.
Nobody is forcing you to stay, I'm sure there are plenty of people who are happy with the *top tier* service of 8meg. Bring price into the equation things start to get interesting!
The 10meg service from virgin is the cheapest option, their 50 meg isn't capped. I have maxed it for well over 24 hours - it really isn't. I'm not a super heavy user but I know I have had some months when I have downloaded well over 100Gb with no recourse. Anecdotal I know but it's interesting all the same.
The other thing is reliability, as a customer of close on 10 years. I can count on one hand the number of times it has gone down. the longest was a couple of hours in back in in about 2006, the most recent was about a month ago mid-week for 20 minutes at around 1am. Again, anecdotal, perhaps I am just lucky.
There seem to be an awful lot of people hating on Virgin because of this that and the other, it sounds terribly like sour grapes. The facts of the matter are pound for pound they offer the fastest service, there 'fair-usage' traffic shaping is advertised and pretty reasonable for what you pay. To the general public these things are all that matter.
Their cable TV? That's shit though. I went so far as getting sky and keeping virgin as my internet provider.
My parking brake is electronic (UK, Audi A4, 59 Plate). I press button and it engages in a couple of seconds. If you happen to be moving (slowly) it will jolt you to a stop. I haven't tried applying it at speed. Its manual shift though so if my brakes fail at least I got that (if i have enough time!)
He has a bit of a point - paper is self adjusting. The luminance of white paper is always going to be the same relative to the luminance of anything else of a given reflectivity, so in general it will always be about the same relative to the surroundings. A computer screen, on the other hand, may be much dimmer or much brighter than the surroundings, if you don't adjust it (or if it's not smart enough to adjust itself). Paper IS easier on the eyes than a badly adjusted screen, due to luminance. It's also easy to fix.
People have commented on the light sensor on my mbp being 'gimmicky' (other laptops probably have them too in the interests of fairness!), far from it imho.
This is exactly what I do. In this respect privacy settings are actually pretty good, and once you get your head round how its implemented its pretty damn easy to use.
Whats frightening is that yours is the first post I have read that actually even acknowledges this is possible. It seems most people would rather just wail that everyone can see everything, entirely missing the point of what facebook is for. Kinda like complaining that streetview shows your house *unless* you request otherwise. "why it oughta default to hidden, grumble, grumble"
Its about taking responsibility for your choices/actions, sadly it seems this is something that is gradually becoming superseded by assignation of blame to a third party.
I don't bother with ad blockers. I don't entirely get the love affair with them either. I successfully ignore IRL ads, ignoring online ads is just as easy. For me its like it gets filterd by the eyes automatically and never even seems to reach the brain!
I have heard arguments about bandwidth and load times, but they seem pretty weak thesedays imho.
I wall grant you that it can be annoying when a site has one of those ad-rotation servers that are unresponsive. In those cases I tend to vote with my feet and go elsewhere.
That's in interesting aside which apparently rebukes the GP's point. However your reasoning merely implies that XP et al run 'bug-free' on Atom.
I suspect that Microsoft - being a software company, that markets to the whole of the x86 space - probably have (or at least should have) tested on Atom.
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it strikes me that far from being the sterile lifeless environments that other non-earth planets are assumed to be, that in fact every planet is likely riddled with life in some form, at a microscopic level at the very least. To assume otherwise is perhaps simply subscribing to that eternal 'truth' that humans believe that they are somehow special in the universe. The ancient greeks, as wise as they were, once believed the earth to be at the very centre of things.
One human may be special to another, but in an almost infinite universe our status of being special looks shaky. Likely 'fairly common' is the best we could ever hope for on a universal scale.
It seems absurd to me the idea that life can only exist in some arbitrary narrow range of conditions? I think we may underestimate that which is life.
People are the problem in so many ways that this comment only scratches the surface.
I see, then I will annoy you with an xkcd reference.
http://www.xkcd.com/728/
That should do the trick.
We see over 80% IE6, most of our users are NHS, hospital staff, clinicians etc
Kind of appropriate in a way.
Cease and desist what? doing what he wants with his phone? If so I'll take that bet.
They put those conditions so that you get support. If you don't want that support, then why would they care.
It's to protect their bottom line, that's why the genius bar can actually work and why the guru bar can only ever be a poor imitation.
It's like those stickers that say warranty void if removed. It protects from users. Users break shit all the time and then try and blame everyone else but themselves.
I agree NAT and port forwarding aspects will(should) be out the window but I still think firewalls that, say, ringfence subnets will still be of value.
Particularly if its a choice between that and letting machines (more specifically a particular OS) handle their own security. That would be a terrifying thought.
Provided you could see it!
Hah, the coral cache has cached the error!
This is an interesting point, I think it is fair to say that modifying of a URL is an intentional act and not an accident?
I'm thinking of a scenario whereby a user modifies a URL say changing a userid to get access to another persons information. Of course the site should prevent this, but if it doesn't can it be said that no liability lies with the user doing the URL modifying?
Not trolling, interested in viewpoints. Sane ones preferably!
Approx 17 seconds
http://www.ssynth.co.uk/~gay/anagram.html
Several handsets I have owned have kill switches, its nothing new.
I was specifically talking about my customers, who are universally businesses.
In a discussion about the speed of provision to UK homes? You make some interesting points about NTL's business support in 2000-2002 but its a bit of stretch to say that anything you have written applies to Virgin's current residential service!
NTL became blueyonder (who were always outstanding) before they became Virgin. Virgin's support is likely blueyonder's legacy and bears little resemblance to anything NTL ever did. I am quite the opposite in my recommendation to friends and family in that given a choice I would always go for cable over ADSL. Its way faster choose (10, 20 or 50 meg as opposed to 8 !?) and easily as reliable.
reliability i will give you.
"provide stuff like static ip subnets" - you just lost 95% of the population, maybe more. *Most* people just want to download stuff, fast. Thats it. That implies it works (or they arent downloading fast - which is what they want), which implies you don't need support (they want to download fast - not be told why they cant and what to do about it). If your computer won't download because of some shitty firewall you installed or because your bandwidth is being sucked up by some trojan or because the site you are downloading from is crap. Thats not virgin's fault, and they shouldn't have to support you and frankly I feel sorry for them having to deal with these people.
Every day I deal with users telling us that our site is working or that 'everyone' is having a problem, when it has nothing to do with us and everything to do with there hardware, software or local NHS network conditions. I take my hat off to virgin for even bothering to have a support line. The service is rock solid, and if it isn't, then you ringing to moan about it is just wasting their time, they know and they are fixing it.
I assume you don't use virgin, I do, have done for the last 10 years. So I'll take your opinion of their customer support with a pinch of salt.
Yes I take your point. Typically though the average user shops by price then bitches when the product they get is shit. There is a lesson about value that many people have yet to, and may never, learn.
I know about NTL - they merged (got bought out by?) blueyonder. BY cusotmer service was far superior. There was a lot of concern at the time about what was going to happen following the deal, particularly about whether it would ruin support. Support was never the same, but it never became terrible.
Utter tripe. Compared to *any* ADSL provider they look like paragons of virtue. 8meg ADSL my ass. I have yet to meet anyone that's gotten above 5.
That's your choice entirely but to recommend people use a slower service than cable? that sounds like you care more about your personal crusade against virgin than it does about helping your friends choose the service that's best for them.
You used the word 'advertised' when describing the max download speed but ommited it when you described the cap. why is that?
read here:
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
consider the cap advertised!
Nobody is forcing you to stay, I'm sure there are plenty of people who are happy with the *top tier* service of 8meg. Bring price into the equation things start to get interesting!
The 10meg service from virgin is the cheapest option, their 50 meg isn't capped. I have maxed it for well over 24 hours - it really isn't. I'm not a super heavy user but I know I have had some months when I have downloaded well over 100Gb with no recourse. Anecdotal I know but it's interesting all the same.
The other thing is reliability, as a customer of close on 10 years. I can count on one hand the number of times it has gone down. the longest was a couple of hours in back in in about 2006, the most recent was about a month ago mid-week for 20 minutes at around 1am. Again, anecdotal, perhaps I am just lucky.
There seem to be an awful lot of people hating on Virgin because of this that and the other, it sounds terribly like sour grapes. The facts of the matter are pound for pound they offer the fastest service, there 'fair-usage' traffic shaping is advertised and pretty reasonable for what you pay. To the general public these things are all that matter.
Their cable TV? That's shit though. I went so far as getting sky and keeping virgin as my internet provider.
ok. point taken. *goes off to huff paint*
We are born. We breathe, eat, sleep and fuck our way through life. Then we die. Nothing novel about that.
My parking brake is electronic (UK, Audi A4, 59 Plate). I press button and it engages in a couple of seconds. If you happen to be moving (slowly) it will jolt you to a stop. I haven't tried applying it at speed. Its manual shift though so if my brakes fail at least I got that (if i have enough time!)
People have commented on the light sensor on my mbp being 'gimmicky' (other laptops probably have them too in the interests of fairness!), far from it imho.
But 90% of programming is staring into space!
This is exactly what I do. In this respect privacy settings are actually pretty good, and once you get your head round how its implemented its pretty damn easy to use.
Whats frightening is that yours is the first post I have read that actually even acknowledges this is possible. It seems most people would rather just wail that everyone can see everything, entirely missing the point of what facebook is for. Kinda like complaining that streetview shows your house *unless* you request otherwise. "why it oughta default to hidden, grumble, grumble"
Its about taking responsibility for your choices/actions, sadly it seems this is something that is gradually becoming superseded by assignation of blame to a third party.
".. Oh, the world owes me a livin' ..." *whistles*
I don't bother with ad blockers. I don't entirely get the love affair with them either. I successfully ignore IRL ads, ignoring online ads is just as easy. For me its like it gets filterd by the eyes automatically and never even seems to reach the brain!
I have heard arguments about bandwidth and load times, but they seem pretty weak thesedays imho.
I wall grant you that it can be annoying when a site has one of those ad-rotation servers that are unresponsive. In those cases I tend to vote with my feet and go elsewhere.
First I read some article about Gates praising Jobs, and now this?
I think the Mayans might be on to something.
That's in interesting aside which apparently rebukes the GP's point. However your reasoning merely implies that XP et al run 'bug-free' on Atom.
I suspect that Microsoft - being a software company, that markets to the whole of the x86 space - probably have (or at least should have) tested on Atom.
I don't see how that helps Apple.