I won't say that Microsoft's got the best solution for drag 'n dropping, however a few things come to mind:
Due to the infinitely chaotic design of Windows, many windows don't have respective buttons on the taskbar.
This is somewhat true, however the Taskbar is usually pretty clear. Also pretty much any application which has an MDI/SDI (Multiple/Single Document Interface) has a taskbar button. It's up to the developer to implement this intelligently, not Microsoft
The user is forced to match the destination window to its respective taskbar button.
This can be a pain sometimes, but rarely for me
If the destination window has a child window open, you can't drag items onto it.
This has to do with the Windows dialog model and developers. When an application opens a child window there are many ways to do it. Based on the modality of the child, it can have it's own taskbar icon, it can be modal-less and therefor independant of the parent window's status, it can be application modal meaning that it's the single active window in the app, or it can be system modal meaning it's the topmost window system-wide. This is completely up to the developer, though I'd like to see more user control over windows available in Avalon.
If the destination window is obscured by another window owned by the application, you can't drag items onto it.
Same as the previous point.
That said, while I haven't used a Mac in a long time, I have seen Expose in use and it appears to be pretty useful. Though it would be another instance of Microsoft "innovation", I'd like to see a similar window management feature available in Windows. Call it copycatting or whatever you like, but giving your users a nice feature put out by somebody else first isn't really a bad thing.
Making a DDoS attack SOP against spammers introduces other problems. Most of these spammer websites are on cheap shared webhosts meaning that when you DDoS the spammer's website you're likely also attacking many innocent websites.
Even if it's determined that attacking a known spammer isn't actively prosecuted, the fact that you're attacking perhaps many other people as well will most likely get attention.
They don't say that it will never become available to Linux and Mac users, simply that it's only out for Windows right now. Think about it for a minute. You only have time to get a single version of the client ready so which OS do you support first? You could release a Linux or Mac client and reach a fraction of your users or a Windows client and reach a large majority. Hmmm, let's see...
Besides, it doesn't sound like the emulation is that tough. Getting Wine working on Linux with simple applications certainly isn't difficult, this coming from a Linux "n00b". I don't know for certain, but I'd imagine that a tax return application would emulate easily enough.
Give them a break and stop whining. Not to tout Windows or bash Linux, but this is what happens when you've chosen to use an operating system with a very small consumer market share. Give it time.
[Wanker] Ah, screw it. Any birds 'ere wanna cyber? [Boss] Yea, alright. [customer] Me too. [Boss] Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight? [customer] Aight. [Wanker] Slip out of those pants baby, yeah. [Boss] I slip out of my pants, just for you. [Wanker] Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat...
It's nice to be able to press a button and have a friendly voice guide you back to the freeway.
Until somebody unplugs their AP and the friendly voice tells you the freeway has gone missing.
Really though, it's not like a GPS receiver is going to cost any more than an "WPS" receiver. Even dirt cheap GPS receivers are accurate withing about 10-15 feet, all day, every day.
To be honest, I don't care how novel their ideas are. Using a system where position is located based on such arbitrary measurements is not only silly, but a waste of time. Not only can anyone move the access points around, but as they get shut off or more get added it will only make things worse. Also considering it can be influenced by minute things like weather and the position of the microwave in the apartment across the street make it a waste of time. You'd need to rescan it at least monthly to maintain even 20-40 feet (screw that) accuracy.
Let's see, a near-absolute positioning system based on immobile and unchanging (or extremely slowly) data, or something based on what could probably be described as a chaotic system? Not to be a jerk about it, but "Forget GPS"? More like "Ignore WPS".
The point is that this service is only for very simple returns (ie, the 1040EZ and similar). For people who are under 18, dependants, and/or don't make very much at all.
H&R makes it's money from corporations, business owners, big investors, the Rich, and people with lots of various incomes and deductibles who want to save every penny in taxes.
If this became federal and most states offered it would it hurt H&R? I suppose it would, at least a little. But hey, if single pregnant women with herpes all stopped eating at KFC I suppose it would hurt the Colonel.
We've seen lots in the last few days about Apple and Intel and some blurring of the lines, but in all this I haven't seen much related to drivers. Think about it for a second. Whether you install Windows on a Mac or OS X on an x86 system, is anything (besides the very basics maybe) going to work?
In order to get OS X as popular on x86 as Windows or Linux it's going to require a LOT of driver writing by both Apple and other vendors. Unless Apple comes up with a way to get Windows-native drivers to work (or Linux I suppose, but Windows has a better full-support native driver base) OS X is going to suffer many of the same problems Linux does with hardware support, specifically products that are not mainstream.
Or am I wrong and is there a quick and easy way to build a native "plug-'n-pray" driver base such as Windows XP has? Love it or hate it, you have to admit that XP really does have great native support for tons of stuff, a feature which is a huge plus for a lot of people. Usually, it really does Just Work (TM)
One other thing I noticed from that incredibly poor "study" was the restart issue. I've installed Office 2003 *many* times and I've never once had to reboot the computer. I've always thought it's nice that MS didn't have you do this after installing Office.
It's already all over the place. There's tons of copies on eDonkey 2k, Gnutella2, and FastTrack. You can also get it via a torrent released today.
This thing isn't going away just because the main website went down. Development has stopped, which is too bad, but it's still available. Who knows? Perhaps somebody can convince the author of the program to "accidently" release the source code into the GPL or something. If it did go open source then at least it might continue a little longer.
I was thinking the same thing. Obviously some stuff will have a driver it installs because it is required for whatever it's doing. Examples of valid ones roll off easy enough: Daemon Tools (ISO emulation), UltraMon (multi-monitor manager), hardware-heavy optical disk apps like Alcohol 120% and Blindwrite, OpenVPN.
I think often times the reasons behind device driver usage are linked very closely to efficiency and ease of implementation. If you need close hardware access and want to be fast and efficient doing it then a device driver is probably best. Even if it were possible doing it with some sort of hook and DLL system, it's going to be a lot slower and more of a kludge.
I figure that while device drivers are another part of software that needs to be analyzed for security flaws, they really aren't that special. One of the simplest security flaws, a buffer overflow, can still be found in who knows how many programs? The fact that a driver runs near the kernel is something to watch for, but methods like DLL injection have enabled people to get kernel-privileged access before on Windows (remember getAdmin for Win2000?).
I'm still looking for a decent text editor(!?!), media player
Try looking at SciTE. It's for Win32 and Linux, free, open, blah blah. I use it for a variety of things, mostly scripting and programming and it does a very good job. Very configurable.
For a media player, I'm not sure what you have against WMP 10, but I will admit occasionally I've come across a video that doesn't play quite right (a small problem with the encoding I've found usually). When this happens I try Media Player Classic. It's a revamped version of WMP 6.4 (many say the best version of WMP released, ever). It supports all the installed codecs and DirectShow like WMP 10. If that still doesn't do it for you, try out some that others posted.
Here's a question someone might be able to answer:
If the login page is non-SSL is there any way that the form info is secure? What if the ACTION of the form is a secure page, does the transit of the form data take place before or after an SSL session is formed? My bank has a form for logging into online banking on their homepage which is not SSL, however as soon as you log in you're in SSL.
Slashdot Mirror
I won't say that Microsoft's got the best solution for drag 'n dropping, however a few things come to mind:
This is somewhat true, however the Taskbar is usually pretty clear. Also pretty much any application which has an MDI/SDI (Multiple/Single Document Interface) has a taskbar button. It's up to the developer to implement this intelligently, not Microsoft
This can be a pain sometimes, but rarely for me
This has to do with the Windows dialog model and developers. When an application opens a child window there are many ways to do it. Based on the modality of the child, it can have it's own taskbar icon, it can be modal-less and therefor independant of the parent window's status, it can be application modal meaning that it's the single active window in the app, or it can be system modal meaning it's the topmost window system-wide. This is completely up to the developer, though I'd like to see more user control over windows available in Avalon.
Same as the previous point.
That said, while I haven't used a Mac in a long time, I have seen Expose in use and it appears to be pretty useful. Though it would be another instance of Microsoft "innovation", I'd like to see a similar window management feature available in Windows. Call it copycatting or whatever you like, but giving your users a nice feature put out by somebody else first isn't really a bad thing.
I had always assumed it was in some kind of formula based on kick-backs and relation of the producers to the members of the board.
No, no. That's how GameSpy and IGN rate games.
For the ESRB, it depends how bitchy they're feeling just then.
Making a DDoS attack SOP against spammers introduces other problems. Most of these spammer websites are on cheap shared webhosts meaning that when you DDoS the spammer's website you're likely also attacking many innocent websites.
Even if it's determined that attacking a known spammer isn't actively prosecuted, the fact that you're attacking perhaps many other people as well will most likely get attention.
*cough*
*cough*
*cough*
*COUGH*
Excuse me, bullshit make me cough.
Funniest post today.
Damn the lack of mod points!
Come on.
They don't say that it will never become available to Linux and Mac users, simply that it's only out for Windows right now. Think about it for a minute. You only have time to get a single version of the client ready so which OS do you support first? You could release a Linux or Mac client and reach a fraction of your users or a Windows client and reach a large majority. Hmmm, let's see...
Besides, it doesn't sound like the emulation is that tough. Getting Wine working on Linux with simple applications certainly isn't difficult, this coming from a Linux "n00b". I don't know for certain, but I'd imagine that a tax return application would emulate easily enough.
Give them a break and stop whining. Not to tout Windows or bash Linux, but this is what happens when you've chosen to use an operating system with a very small consumer market share. Give it time.
[...]
[Wanker] Ah, screw it. Any birds 'ere wanna cyber?
[Boss] Yea, alright.
[customer] Me too.
[Boss] Baby, I been havin a tough night so treat me nice aight?
[customer] Aight.
[Wanker] Slip out of those pants baby, yeah.
[Boss] I slip out of my pants, just for you.
[Wanker] Oh yeah, aight. Aight, I put on my robe and wizard hat...
Ref
There's enough pictures on there that this could easily go down.
Here's a Coral Cache of it to help ease some of the disappearing server Slashdot magic.
But he fixed it all with an Update!
CT: Sorry for the dupe. Teach me to forget to relaunch my mail client.
It's alright Taco, you don't have to try to be sneaky. You can say Outlook Express here and nobody will judge you. Really!
It's nice to be able to press a button and have a friendly voice guide you back to the freeway.
Until somebody unplugs their AP and the friendly voice tells you the freeway has gone missing.
Really though, it's not like a GPS receiver is going to cost any more than an "WPS" receiver. Even dirt cheap GPS receivers are accurate withing about 10-15 feet, all day, every day.
To be honest, I don't care how novel their ideas are. Using a system where position is located based on such arbitrary measurements is not only silly, but a waste of time. Not only can anyone move the access points around, but as they get shut off or more get added it will only make things worse. Also considering it can be influenced by minute things like weather and the position of the microwave in the apartment across the street make it a waste of time. You'd need to rescan it at least monthly to maintain even 20-40 feet (screw that) accuracy.
Let's see, a near-absolute positioning system based on immobile and unchanging (or extremely slowly) data, or something based on what could probably be described as a chaotic system? Not to be a jerk about it, but "Forget GPS"? More like "Ignore WPS".
The point is that this service is only for very simple returns (ie, the 1040EZ and similar). For people who are under 18, dependants, and/or don't make very much at all.
H&R makes it's money from corporations, business owners, big investors, the Rich, and people with lots of various incomes and deductibles who want to save every penny in taxes.
If this became federal and most states offered it would it hurt H&R? I suppose it would, at least a little. But hey, if single pregnant women with herpes all stopped eating at KFC I suppose it would hurt the Colonel.
It's kiddie porn.
And this children, is why one should RTFA.
*cough*
This is a pretty tough one. I won't be able to decide until I see the evidence.
Bah, you can do that already!
In Soviet Russia Google googles YOU!
And, it helps get your Insightful reading pleasure for the day.
Also, some interesting possibilities.
Yay for google.
Two words: device drivers.
We've seen lots in the last few days about Apple and Intel and some blurring of the lines, but in all this I haven't seen much related to drivers. Think about it for a second. Whether you install Windows on a Mac or OS X on an x86 system, is anything (besides the very basics maybe) going to work?
In order to get OS X as popular on x86 as Windows or Linux it's going to require a LOT of driver writing by both Apple and other vendors. Unless Apple comes up with a way to get Windows-native drivers to work (or Linux I suppose, but Windows has a better full-support native driver base) OS X is going to suffer many of the same problems Linux does with hardware support, specifically products that are not mainstream.
Or am I wrong and is there a quick and easy way to build a native "plug-'n-pray" driver base such as Windows XP has? Love it or hate it, you have to admit that XP really does have great native support for tons of stuff, a feature which is a huge plus for a lot of people. Usually, it really does Just Work (TM)
One other thing I noticed from that incredibly poor "study" was the restart issue. I've installed Office 2003 *many* times and I've never once had to reboot the computer. I've always thought it's nice that MS didn't have you do this after installing Office.
Funny, an "in Soviet Russia" joke that was modded to 5, Funny.
I mean, in Soviet Russia, in Soviet Russia jokes mod you 5, Funny.
It's already all over the place. There's tons of copies on eDonkey 2k, Gnutella2, and FastTrack. You can also get it via a torrent released today.
This thing isn't going away just because the main website went down. Development has stopped, which is too bad, but it's still available. Who knows? Perhaps somebody can convince the author of the program to "accidently" release the source code into the GPL or something. If it did go open source then at least it might continue a little longer.
Saw this image earlier and got a good laugh.
FTA:
As Mr. Sage put it, "It's like a little bit of Bill Gates came with us when we left."
So that's how they climbed up the corporate ladder. Good advice I suppose, if your boss is into that kind of thing.
Could someone give me examples of this?
I was thinking the same thing. Obviously some stuff will have a driver it installs because it is required for whatever it's doing. Examples of valid ones roll off easy enough: Daemon Tools (ISO emulation), UltraMon (multi-monitor manager), hardware-heavy optical disk apps like Alcohol 120% and Blindwrite, OpenVPN.
I think often times the reasons behind device driver usage are linked very closely to efficiency and ease of implementation. If you need close hardware access and want to be fast and efficient doing it then a device driver is probably best. Even if it were possible doing it with some sort of hook and DLL system, it's going to be a lot slower and more of a kludge.
I figure that while device drivers are another part of software that needs to be analyzed for security flaws, they really aren't that special. One of the simplest security flaws, a buffer overflow, can still be found in who knows how many programs? The fact that a driver runs near the kernel is something to watch for, but methods like DLL injection have enabled people to get kernel-privileged access before on Windows (remember getAdmin for Win2000?).
I'm still looking for a decent text editor(!?!), media player
Try looking at SciTE. It's for Win32 and Linux, free, open, blah blah. I use it for a variety of things, mostly scripting and programming and it does a very good job. Very configurable.
For a media player, I'm not sure what you have against WMP 10, but I will admit occasionally I've come across a video that doesn't play quite right (a small problem with the encoding I've found usually). When this happens I try Media Player Classic. It's a revamped version of WMP 6.4 (many say the best version of WMP released, ever). It supports all the installed codecs and DirectShow like WMP 10. If that still doesn't do it for you, try out some that others posted.
Here's a question someone might be able to answer:
If the login page is non-SSL is there any way that the form info is secure? What if the ACTION of the form is a secure page, does the transit of the form data take place before or after an SSL session is formed? My bank has a form for logging into online banking on their homepage which is not SSL, however as soon as you log in you're in SSL.
Anyone know?
Step 3: Debt?!?!
That's too good to be hiding under the AC threshold.