> Now, if my CD writer dies, I just go buy another one, and I'm out only a few $10 bills. I don't care (as much) about quality. If my CD writer works for two years, I'm happy.
I have a CD writer like that... and I happen to have a nice plexwriter which cost a bit more then a few $10 (or E10 in my case) bills..
The difference? on a spindol of 50 cheap cd-rs, the plexwriter burns 50 usable cds on average, the cheap writer some 45-48.. It reads badly damaged audio cds very well, comes with software that will read any audio cd, no matter what protection, generally reads discs that are unreadable on other drives etc etc.
If all you are interested in is getting cd burning capability cheaply then quality matters less I guess.. but when you buy quality, you still get better value for your money it seems to me.
For a variety of reasons, they don't seem to have much of a position in the Netherlands (ebay.nl is just kinda dead and useless for most purposes, ebay.com is used for non domestic trade quite a bit tho) Distances play a role, its usually just as easy to go pick something up or arrange for a way to have something change hands without needing an auction site.
The local market is rather small which is probably not too helpfull for ebay.nl either.
This all is helped a lot also by a Dutch online advertising site where any private person can advertise items with an approximate value of upto 200 euro for free. No seller authentication, not even somethign like binding bids... but then, you just go pick it up and pay there.. or don't if it turns out to not be as described.. A lot easier all:)
Ebay cut its prices here to a fixed low (sub 1 euro) price no matter what the value of your auction is.. lessee if it does them any good.
Heh, since I have my URL in the top of my posts, search engines definitely found me;P Seems MSN just started indexing it somewhat fanatically as well.. rise in visits from google is also more then just noticable..
Luckily, google and friends also get me real visitors (and so do the posts on slashdot for that matter)
Gonna make some changes to my site the commign days to see what it does, google comes by so often now that it should pick them up in no-time;P
> If the "Open" Group isn't "open", how do you explain Linux?
I wonder if you know what the 'Open Group' is. Its the peopel who gave us (Open) Motif, and who 'own' the Unix trademark at this moment. Its where old DEC, IBM, HP and others used to try to give the impression that at least for their part proprietary Unix wasn't splintered...
Yeah, they also publish specs, and those can be seen, and as a result often used by everyone, including Linux.. But thats also where Linux' relation to that group ends really.
How open does it get? CDE? Motif's incompatible licenses? yeah right.
Regarding PDF, lets see when xpdf actually starts rendering things correctly or ghostscript/view starts performing well enough to make it usable for reading PDF files on my Athlon XP 2600+ (note that Adobe reader on Windows on the same machine has no such trouble whatsoever) Not to mention that both tools break on files every now and then (and usually on different files)
Don't get me wrong, I love PDF as a format for what it allows me to do (produce things that will look how I intended them to look and that can be read by everyone)
It seems to me however that the PDF specs aren't so clear and well published that I can count on most non Adobe tools to handle them correctly in virtually all cases tho, and since that seems to apply to baslicly all non Adobe tools, I find it hard to blame the quality of such software for it.
So, open format? guess you are right strictly spoken. And I gues my comparison with the Open Group was not that far off, they publish lots of usefull specs as well, but that doesn't make their stuff 'open', you can just build very similar stuff as a result.
Hell, even the mpeg group members at least build reference implementations of their stuff that people can use (licences is another thing there of course) and their specs are clear enough for a near 100% level of inter-operability between random (but within spec) encoder and random (but within spec) decoder.
A single user cannot start asking everyone to send them docs in OOo, they will be laughed at.
Well, no need for that. OOo does a pretty good job reading proprietary word and excel files, oh an powerpoint files as well.
The thign is that the OOo user will have to remember to send files to MS Office users that they can actually read.
company that wants to do business will have to send in an open format such as OOo, CSV, HTML, PDF, etc.
Last time I looked, PDF is quite owned by Adobe. Yes, there are open implementations of PDF writign and reading code,, and quite good ones for that matter.. but hrm.. Kets say it is about as open as lots of the stuff from the 'Open' group..
At any rate, it works well for publishing your texts since everyoen can read it and it will print as you want it.
Heh, for joe user, usenet is way too cumbersome to bother with, even with nice gui tools to automate a large part of it.. multipart encode? par files??? I see their eyes going blank.. so well. not too much to fear there for a while I think;)
Is it me or is the name usenet in this case a bit ironic?
Lets see... I think you are the one who got it almost all wrong..
Blame the writer for writing the virus, agreed, and you are right on that one.
Blame MS for unknowingly creating a system that makes it so easy to infect thousands of computers over a shared network and then for over a decade knowingly not fixing it and yet selling it as being secure, why do you have such trouble with that?
It is not the first worm/virus that happens to them, not the last either I'd bet, and they still take years to address simple and very clear problems in their design that causes this.
Blame system admins for not being knowledgable in what should be their area of expertise, what is wrong with that?
When a burgler enters my house because the lock in the door didn't prove a problem at all while the company that sold it guaranteed it to be upto all modern standards concerning its security... Sure I'll blame the burgler and hope he'll get caught and such. I'll however also blame the lock manufacteror for 1. providing me with a lousy product, and 2. lying about their product specifications. I may even blame the maintenance guy for not installign and maintaining it properly.
Turn off all those ports? It doesn't take a genius to download the shavlik lockdown tool linked to by MS itself that will "audit" your system and close any unused ports. It also doesn't take a genius to click to e-eye for an external audit.
If that is all so easy, and MS is aware of it, why don't they solve the problem by locking it down before selling it?
The problem is that anyone who is selling a product that is claimed to be internet ready, and didn't properly lock it down, is simply lying, their product is NOT internet ready.
MS has known this for a decade now, and ignored it. During the same time they tried buying their way into the server market with the low cost administration argument, based on needing lower skilled administrators and it all being made 'easier'.
Don't get me wrong btw, it is good to make things easier and to try to reduce the cost and time aspects of administration. It is utterly wrong to say you did so, give every impression you did so to the casual viewer, and then turn out to have made things more expensive and time consuming, and also having ensured companies no longer employ people skilled enough to deal with it.
Its simple, security requires people skilled in securing things. Requirements for the average home user are relatively low, and can often be provided for by standard solutions (door/window locks, alarm systems and so on for physical security of the house, a limited set of security features for the computer) and there exists no level of security that will prevent every possible problem.
IF MS would stop today with giving the impression that administratign and securing a corporate network or large network of small users (like the average isp) is simple, I'd stop putting that large a part of the blame on them. Of course they'll also need to cange their policy to a disable everything by default unless the user asks for it and has been informed about the security consequences.
As you sated correctly, not every OSS product is immune from this either, and I'm personally not very fond of smoothwall, or any of the linux based firewall packages for that matter. When I want a firewall I want either OpenBSD's pf or FreeBSD's ipfw2. On top of that, I want NO gui management or remote management of such a firewall product by default, and untill I go delve into the system to change things, no management ever using the outside port. That means no listening services whatsoever, and to get services listening on the outside port should require sufficient knowledge of the system first.
You amke me wonder btw.. WHAT ssl port was left open? SSL is usually used to encrypt/decrypt and sign the trafic for another service such as a http server. I assume in your case there was a webserver with ssl listening on the outside port?
At any rate, for a home user, get yourself a simple firewall box that simply doesn't do anything more then that, and in most cases it should be enough. It wont listen to the outside world, and it also wont allow too much flexibility that usually just results in messing up stuff
If you want the flexibility, go get the knowledge to use it or don't expect security.
as stupid as holding the coca-cola company responsible when some idiot pulls one of their vending machines over onto himself.
No, it compares to Coca-cola putting vending machines out there of which they know then when not maintaining them for 2 hours/week, they'll blow up on random customers, or spray them with cola, or cause any other random effect.
I'd understand your comparison if this was a matter of MS making casual mistakes while having a generally healthy design. They don't have a healthy design, and have known so for at least a decade and didn't fix it. You really think Coca-cola would even be in business if they ignored such problems with their products for a decade causing comparable damage?
Well, the reason that a Windows admin is more busy with such stuff is twofold: - More bugs - Have to keep fixing things that are not being used at all, but that can't just be uninstalled/disabled.
For example, on my (FreeBSD in this case) Open Source OS based server, I can simply ignore patches for web browsers, mail clients, and generally any gui based program since they are not installed or at least not functioning, and definitely not listenign to the outside world without me havign set it up that way very explicitly.
I do have to watch a very specific shortlist of products that need to be kept uptodate, and I'll get a message on my phone in case a critical bug in one of those products is published in any of the known ways.
Having this shortlist of products (FreeBSD core, openssl, openssh, Apache, PHP) makes it very managable, and in the end I don't have to update things that often.
It would also really help a lot if MS patches didn't break so much and so often. I can remember virtually every case where a FreeBSD patch managed to messup my system over the last 8 years, and the last one goes back to the 3.x era some years ago. It seldom happens, and its in fact so exceptional that I can run the risk of it happening on my production servers. The risk and consequences are waaay smaller then the much more likely breakins that would result if I dont apply the patches.
At any rate, it doesn't take much time, and it is very clear what I have to watch and patch to keep secure. That is one of the main problems with Windows, even when you are a competant admin, you have so many things to watch, and keep discovering new things all the time.
Yes, I do believe that MS can be blamed for that problem. Such a system is not suitable for anything other then connecting to an isolated and trusted local area network. THe fact that windows uses IP for many LAN orriented services makes the problem a lot worse.
Untill it finally died in the early 90s as a 'current' platform, the Amiga has seen many times more virus problems then the PC, despite there being like at least 10x more PCs around.
If a platform makes it easy, and invites user behavior that helps propagating worm and virus code, that is when a platform becomes a viable and interesting target.. well, there need to be more then enough of them around, but really, anythign with 1%+ marketshare easily satisfies that.
Not locking your front door doesn't give you the right to blame the door-making companies when you get burgled.
Unless that door making company sold you a secure, auto locking, low attention needed door with lock, and the auto locking, low attention needed part turns out to be false and the door maker could easily have known it, and most conceivably actually did know it.
In proper commercial terms that is false advertising, in proper English that is called lying.
The day MS starts proclaiming everywhere that its software is NOT suitable for end users (and consumers) unless they have a professional administrator around who is going to spend AT LEAST 2 hours on their computer every week to keep it secure, till that day I will blame MS for selling a product that they know is broken, and selling it while claiming it is the exact opposite of broken.
Yup, it comes down to everyone. It's easy to say "MS sucks, look at this proof" but the fact is MANY systems are vulnerable to malicious intent and the free solutions escape much of this attention simply because fewer people seem to be - for now - writing exploits.
That almost sounds like a real argument, it is not.
Most other systems that want to call themselves 'modern' listen to a very limited group of services only by default, and those are services to be known to be generally safe (tho at times things do happen with those as well) and have been comming with built in firewall software for at least half a decade. Note that that includes almost all free unix variations.
OSS software has a much better track record documenting and fixing problems
Both MS and those admins are responsible. MS for knowingly selling an unsafe system, and the admins for knowingly using it.
That MS systems still listen to the entire world on a whole variety of different ports is a huge part of the problem, and it not comming with a product like ZoneAlarm by default to at least mitigate the problem a bit is really a very significcant part of what makes worms like sasser go well.
The impopular platforms don't get targetted argument is old, and if you'd just take a peak at the insane amount of malware for the Amiga platform, you'd see how stupidl;y wrong the argument is proven to be by reality.
THe only partial truth in your argument is that the admins are aslo to be blamed.
> While both are necessary, seeing them individually shouldn't be. What he's referring to is making the individuality of the grains less apparent
They will not be apparant when they are small enough while beign displayed. Trying to remove the grain of a film by means of filters is seldom going to give you a better viewable result, most often it does exactly the opposite.
Its only of any use when the caputred material has a resolution lower then the display it is going to be shown on, and seeing the 4k lines/frame resolution and transcoding to DVD, that seems extremely unlikely. Thra grainyness of traditional movie film is still a lot better then the resolution of any consumer level medium, esp. DVD and (s)vhs (realize that such films have to look good on HUGE projection screens)
Capturing at this resolution is usefull for removing other imperfections and defects, all my original post was about is that the grainyness is not a defect, and that there is no point usually in removing it because it will simply not be visible on the display devices that are practical.
When a human can use concepts that are natural to a human (s)he has indeed a better chance to do the job right.
This was not about creating technically better admins but about getting the same quality of administration and usage while needing less technical knowledge.
Well, obviously we disagree on some points but it is an intemssting discussion. I am away for about a week (writing this on my pda while in the train to Berlin), thanks so far and lets see if we can continue it at some other time.
> Well, if we do, it'll be our first. Europe managed to start two in 50 years
Definitely. Besides, I don't think the USA will start it directly. Its more like it being a major cause for the conditions that may trigger it.
Comming from a continent that triggered those 2 wars, and having had family involved on both sides, I think I have a bit of a background and can recognize fascist behavior in a government rather well. You have one there right now. Also, it involves itself in manipulation of the population, and is following one of the well known 'tricks' of many totalitarian governments, make the people 'feel' so they don't think and you can do what you want. You should really take a closer look at it, regardless of it being the motivation of the war against Iraq, the arguments in the current election campeign, it doesn't matter. Ensure you have the people fear things, make they believe you can save them and ensure they are reminded of it often enough to not start to think.
Then, the USA quite often forgets to look at the long term effects of its policies. That is more general then the current administration, and shows clearly from McArthur's mistake to cross the 'red line' in North Korea. It is blatantly clear from supporting people like Bin Laden and Saddam (and the USA was not the only oen guilty of that in the case of Saddam either, blame on those others as well)
It is obvious from the failure to see what Saudi Arabia is really about (it is one of the most totalitarian and fundamentalist states on this planet, probably only surpassed by North Korea)
It is evident from supporting the Sjah of Iran at the time, despite knowing that he was directly responsible for gross violations of human rights. Better still, the CIA helped his secret service with 'more effective means of interrogation'. (and you are really surprised that the average person in Iran doesn't have such warm feelings about the USA?)
Oh and lets not forget all those 'freedom loving' governments in the Southern Americas over the decades.
Ah yeah, then there is this little detail about financial support to the IRA.. Somehow those peopel were rebels regardless of them blowing up civilians and all that kind of stuff that in many other cases is called terrorism.
Once more, I don't hate the USA, nor its people. But I do believe there are some rather short sighted, if not utterly misguided ideas that are currently rather popular there, and the current administration is a good example of people with such ideas.
Then, I'd rather see people overthere wake up to a few facts regarding what their government is doing abroad and what it is causing. You must realize that no matter how horrible and completely unjustifiable the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were, they were not entirely unprovoked, and it is really time that you start seeing what exactly is provoking that (yeah, I know, there will always be idiots who want to do such things, but how can it be that they find the kind of support among people they need to actually pull it off? In most places such idiots end up either as the village idiot, in prison or in mental healthcare)
Btw, the attack on Madrid was different in that it served a direct political purpose on top of just trying to install fear, it had far less to do with revenge. Not that that makes any difference to the victims tho.
It is also rather interesting to see how both attacks were very succesfull due to the responses they caused. The USA went itno a security frenzy and removed quite a few freedoms, it let itself be triggered into very doubtfull behavior regarding human rights, and it got drawn into a war in the middle east (a logn stated goal of mr. Laden and friends)
The attack in Madrid managed to cause even more disharmony in the coalition, and expect similar events targetting other countries where it may be easy to cause them to partially withdraw. This is possible simply due to ignoring public opinion in countries like Spain.
It blows me away how many people are completely unaware of why the UN was created. It wasn't created to be a world government body to solve all the world's problems.
It was indeed not meant to be a world government.
It was created to prevent WW III, which primarily involving giving the super powers a forum to work out disagreements instead of declaring war. The atom bomb had a lot to do with why the UN was created.
Ok, lets get a few things clear here.
1. The concept of the UN dates back to a time when the atomic bomb was not yet conceived, and it was not known yet if/how it could be made, the concept behind it was barely known.
You have to look back a few decades before 1945 to find its origins, the UN was a re-implementation of a failed idea.
Yeah, its purpose, among other things, was to prevent war in general, and world war III in particular.
Veto power was and still is the only means of keeping the superpowers (those with the most nukes) involved, primarily the US, Russia and China. This hasn't changed. Proposing getting rid of veto power is an invitation to nuclear holocaust, because the US, Russia and China would simply withdraw. They have no incentive to permit smaller nations to dictate what they can and cannot do. If a ruling passed they disagreed with they could either ignore it, or go to war if the ruling resulted in harm to their country (e.g., global embargo of the US.) The veto power is the only thing that protects them from "majority rule".
When majority rule provides for guarantees for the rights of the minorities, it has shown to be by far the best system we know. It is why the USA is so proud of having a form of majority rule.
Your line of thought is popular but has a major flaw. If you do not allow the majority of the world to take pressing but non violent measures against a superpower that decides to just fuck up, then the only response is violence. When fighting a superpower, the choice will be unconventional violence also since there is little point in fighting the army of say the USA or China headon.
Now, before you come around and tell me that the USA doesn't have majority rule, strictly spoken, it is ruled by 'the elite', whom are supposedly elected representatives. THat means that the majority rules indirectly, not directly. That is very relevant because it solves one of the major issues with the idea of majority rule, but in the end it is still majority rule (tho one might argue that in case of the current administration its minority that rules by luck and the inability to properly count votes or hold an election)
Last but not least, the fact that the UN is not intended as, and should not be a world government in no way changes that its members are generally unwilling to accept minority rule. The longer a minority ignores such a situation, the more violent the restoration of balance of power will become.
> Seriously, there's not even enough to say "double standard" here.
Hmm, lets see.
Israel: Violation of UN charter on multiple accounts, including illegal anexation of territory and war of aggression. Suspected (..) of having and producing weapons of mass destruction (with help from the USA no less) Refuses to let the IAEA inspect its nuclear facilities. Ignorting UN resolutions. Violating the Geneva conventions.
Iraq: Violation of UN charter on multiple accounts, including attempted anexation of territory and war of aggression (once with support from most of the western world) Suspected of owning and producing weapons of mass destruction (with help from Russia, France, Germany, The USA and others) Obstructing inspections after having been forced to accept them by the UN security council. Ignoring UN resolutions Violating the Geneva conventions.
Are the circumstances different? yes. Are the results any different? not for the victims.
For as far as the UN charter is concerned (to which both states are a party), the above activities are illegal, regardless of motivation. War of aggression and anexation of territory are simply not permitted ever.
Hence the difference in underlying circumstances may be very relevant for determining the actual solution, but cannot be an excuse to sabotage any attempts to do something about it.
> Guess it's easier to hate the US than it is to see the problem that the UN created.
Not exactly, I guess it is easier to blame the UN for the consistant undermining by the former USSR and the USA mostly (China had a bit of a share as well)
Does the UN need reform? definitely. But one of the most needed reforms is getting rid of the veto. That would have meant that France would have been unable to sabotage the discussion about Iraq (maybe with the same, maybe with a different outcome) and it would stop the USA from sabotaging any efford to get a less one sided picture of the situation in the middle east.
> Not really relevant to this dicussion, sorry.
As you can read from the above, it is very relevant because in both cases the inaction of the UN is caused by the exact same thing.
Also, it is relevant because the USA uses the exact same argument to block any actions regarding the middle east (linking it to other unresolved situations)
> Heh. Well the only way we're going to fix our government is to radically change how people get into office in the first place. There is a lot of bad motivators out there to get into office, and a lot of crappy ways (i.e. abuse of the media) to get in there. It's not a matter of electing the right man, that's futile, it's a matter of removing those bad influences
And there I can agree completely.
> As for the 3rd world war, sorry, no, that's just not in our future. I don't doubt that more blood will be spilled, but it's very difficult to imagine that it'd escalate to nuclear proportions. A lot of things would have to change.
You really think so?
It may be hard to imagine from your point of view, but that would be because of being out of touch with what the behavior of the current administration is triggering outside the USA.
In the end the most dangerous part of what the current administration is doing is demonizing anyone who disagrees with them. That is simply bound to make you a lot of enemies. SO while they may not be the first one to hit the button, they very much create the circumstances in which dangerous idiots can gather popular support and do very foolish things.
Just to get something straigt, I do not believe the USA as such is evil, nor that its peopel are. I do however believe that there are a few very misguided ideas about the world that have gotten a hold there, esp. among the current administration and their closest supporters, but with a resonance among a much broader part of the population.
You can get away for a while with not caring about that rest of the world with regards to what they think and want, but seeing how they have like almost 20x the number of people, and happen to have most of the real dangerous tech as well, that is really not going to last, and is bound to backfire very badly. That is why I am saying they have a decent chance of triggering a 3rd world war, I wasn't so much saying they'd start it directly.
> Yes, the US was eager to get it taken care of. They had an itchy trigger finger, so to speak.
Yeah.. which is exactly why many have a problem with it. An itchy trigger finger is likely to get you in jail, even in the USA, why would it be acceptable behavior from a country as a whole?
> Of course, in the space of 10 years or so, Saddam had racked up 17 UN violations. Pity Clinton didn't take care of it.
Ah, that sounds so good..
Untill you realize that big friend Israel has been racking about double that amount of resolutions since 1867 alone.. when is the USA gonna take action there?
Not to mention that the USA helped Sadam keep to power for a logn time first, just like those many other 'democratic' people they have kept in charge in so many other places around the world..
The bottomline is that GW and soem peopel he appointed to his government had an issue to settle with Sadam still. GW because he doesn't like peopel who try to kill his dad, and some peopel in his government because of wanting to finish what they had started when Bush senior was president.
The rest fof it was a partially made-up, and completely blown out of proportion argument to justify it.
You know what, that stupid attitude of the USA is making for a lot of trigger happy people around the world, and before you know it, 9/11 will look like a friendly and innocent incident.
Do something about people like Sadam? hell yes. BUT FUCKING STOP SUPPORTING SUCH PEOPLE TO BEGIN WITH. THat someoen may come in handy at a specific moment doesn't mean you can just ignore morality alltogether and support the person. The USA has made that mistake again and again and again and again, and now finds itself in a mess and has to clean it up.. gee, deal with it, buncha big whiners. Oh, and if you want to be anywhere believable regarding your big words of Freedom, Democracy, Human rights and so on, it would be a really really good idea to start with implementing them yourselves instead of tellign others what to do.
Luckily there are many Americans who are sick of the idiot attitude of their current government as well and don't want to be ruled by a bunch of lying fascists, I hope they manage to do something about it because the way things are now, the USA is going to cause a major war if not a 3rd world war.
Slashdot Mirror
Nor is getting a properly functioning webpage where half of the text isn't clipped off.
> Now, if my CD writer dies, I just go buy another one, and I'm out only a few $10 bills. I don't care (as much) about quality. If my CD writer works for two years, I'm happy.
I have a CD writer like that... and I happen to have a nice plexwriter which cost a bit more then a few $10 (or E10 in my case) bills..
The difference? on a spindol of 50 cheap cd-rs, the plexwriter burns 50 usable cds on average, the cheap writer some 45-48.. It reads badly damaged audio cds very well, comes with software that will read any audio cd, no matter what protection, generally reads discs that are unreadable on other drives etc etc.
If all you are interested in is getting cd burning capability cheaply then quality matters less I guess.. but when you buy quality, you still get better value for your money it seems to me.
That is an interesting question.
:)
For a variety of reasons, they don't seem to have much of a position in the Netherlands (ebay.nl is just kinda dead and useless for most purposes, ebay.com is used for non domestic trade quite a bit tho) Distances play a role, its usually just as easy to go pick something up or arrange for a way to have something change hands without needing an auction site.
The local market is rather small which is probably not too helpfull for ebay.nl either.
This all is helped a lot also by a Dutch online advertising site where any private person can advertise items with an approximate value of upto 200 euro for free. No seller authentication, not even somethign like binding bids... but then, you just go pick it up and pay there.. or don't if it turns out to not be as described.. A lot easier all
Ebay cut its prices here to a fixed low (sub 1 euro) price no matter what the value of your auction is.. lessee if it does them any good.
Heh, since I have my URL in the top of my posts, search engines definitely found me ;P Seems MSN just started indexing it somewhat fanatically as well.. rise in visits from google is also more then just noticable..
;P
Luckily, google and friends also get me real visitors (and so do the posts on slashdot for that matter)
Gonna make some changes to my site the commign days to see what it does, google comes by so often now that it should pick them up in no-time
> So, Google uses RSS feeds to power Google news?
That is a surprise?
> If the "Open" Group isn't "open", how do you explain Linux?
I wonder if you know what the 'Open Group' is.
Its the peopel who gave us (Open) Motif, and who 'own' the Unix trademark at this moment. Its where old DEC, IBM, HP and others used to try to give the impression that at least for their part proprietary Unix wasn't splintered...
Yeah, they also publish specs, and those can be seen, and as a result often used by everyone, including Linux.. But thats also where Linux' relation to that group ends really.
How open does it get? CDE? Motif's incompatible licenses? yeah right.
Regarding PDF, lets see when xpdf actually starts rendering things correctly or ghostscript/view starts performing well enough to make it usable for reading PDF files on my Athlon XP 2600+ (note that Adobe reader on Windows on the same machine has no such trouble whatsoever) Not to mention that both tools break on files every now and then (and usually on different files)
Don't get me wrong, I love PDF as a format for what it allows me to do (produce things that will look how I intended them to look and that can be read by everyone)
It seems to me however that the PDF specs aren't so clear and well published that I can count on most non Adobe tools to handle them correctly in virtually all cases tho, and since that seems to apply to baslicly all non Adobe tools, I find it hard to blame the quality of such software for it.
So, open format? guess you are right strictly spoken. And I gues my comparison with the Open Group was not that far off, they publish lots of usefull specs as well, but that doesn't make their stuff 'open', you can just build very similar stuff as a result.
Hell, even the mpeg group members at least build reference implementations of their stuff that people can use (licences is another thing there of course) and their specs are clear enough for a near 100% level of inter-operability between random (but within spec) encoder and random (but within spec) decoder.
Let me correct you on a few points:
A single user cannot start asking everyone to send them docs in OOo, they will be laughed at.
Well, no need for that. OOo does a pretty good job reading proprietary word and excel files, oh an powerpoint files as well.
The thign is that the OOo user will have to remember to send files to MS Office users that they can actually read.
company that wants to do business will have to send in an open format such as OOo, CSV, HTML, PDF, etc.
Last time I looked, PDF is quite owned by Adobe.
Yes, there are open implementations of PDF writign and reading code,, and quite good ones for that matter.. but hrm..
Kets say it is about as open as lots of the stuff from the 'Open' group..
At any rate, it works well for publishing your texts since everyoen can read it and it will print as you want it.
Heh, for joe user, usenet is way too cumbersome to bother with, even with nice gui tools to automate a large part of it.. ;)
multipart encode? par files??? I see their eyes going blank.. so well. not too much to fear there for a while I think
Is it me or is the name usenet in this case a bit ironic?
Lets see... I think you are the one who got it almost all wrong..
Blame the writer for writing the virus, agreed, and you are right on that one.
Blame MS for unknowingly creating a system that makes it so easy to infect thousands of computers over a shared network and then for over a decade knowingly not fixing it and yet selling it as being secure, why do you have such trouble with that?
It is not the first worm/virus that happens to them, not the last either I'd bet, and they still take years to address simple and very clear problems in their design that causes this.
Blame system admins for not being knowledgable in what should be their area of expertise, what is wrong with that?
When a burgler enters my house because the lock in the door didn't prove a problem at all while the company that sold it guaranteed it to be upto all modern standards concerning its security... Sure I'll blame the burgler and hope he'll get caught and such. I'll however also blame the lock manufacteror for 1. providing me with a lousy product, and 2. lying about their product specifications. I may even blame the maintenance guy for not installign and maintaining it properly.
If that is all so easy, and MS is aware of it, why don't they solve the problem by locking it down before selling it?
The problem is that anyone who is selling a product that is claimed to be internet ready, and didn't properly lock it down, is simply lying, their product is NOT internet ready.
MS has known this for a decade now, and ignored it. During the same time they tried buying their way into the server market with the low cost administration argument, based on needing lower skilled administrators and it all being made 'easier'.
Don't get me wrong btw, it is good to make things easier and to try to reduce the cost and time aspects of administration. It is utterly wrong to say you did so, give every impression you did so to the casual viewer, and then turn out to have made things more expensive and time consuming, and also having ensured companies no longer employ people skilled enough to deal with it.
Its simple, security requires people skilled in securing things. Requirements for the average home user are relatively low, and can often be provided for by standard solutions (door/window locks, alarm systems and so on for physical security of the house, a limited set of security features for the computer) and there exists no level of security that will prevent every possible problem.
IF MS would stop today with giving the impression that administratign and securing a corporate network or large network of small users (like the average isp) is simple, I'd stop putting that large a part of the blame on them. Of course they'll also need to cange their policy to a disable everything by default unless the user asks for it and has been informed about the security consequences.
As you sated correctly, not every OSS product is immune from this either, and I'm personally not very fond of smoothwall, or any of the linux based firewall packages for that matter. When I want a firewall I want either OpenBSD's pf or FreeBSD's ipfw2. On top of that, I want NO gui management or remote management of such a firewall product by default, and untill I go delve into the system to change things, no management ever using the outside port. That means no listening services whatsoever, and to get services listening on the outside port should require sufficient knowledge of the system first.
You amke me wonder btw.. WHAT ssl port was left open? SSL is usually used to encrypt/decrypt and sign the trafic for another service such as a http server. I assume in your case there was a webserver with ssl listening on the outside port?
At any rate, for a home user, get yourself a simple firewall box that simply doesn't do anything more then that, and in most cases it should be enough. It wont listen to the outside world, and it also wont allow too much flexibility that usually just results in messing up stuff
If you want the flexibility, go get the knowledge to use it or don't expect security.
as stupid as holding the coca-cola company responsible when some idiot pulls one of their vending machines over onto himself.
No, it compares to Coca-cola putting vending machines out there of which they know then when not maintaining them for 2 hours/week, they'll blow up on random customers, or spray them with cola, or cause any other random effect.
I'd understand your comparison if this was a matter of MS making casual mistakes while having a generally healthy design. They don't have a healthy design, and have known so for at least a decade and didn't fix it. You really think Coca-cola would even be in business if they ignored such problems with their products for a decade causing comparable damage?
Well, the reason that a Windows admin is more busy with such stuff is twofold:
- More bugs
- Have to keep fixing things that are not being used at all, but that can't just be uninstalled/disabled.
For example, on my (FreeBSD in this case) Open Source OS based server, I can simply ignore patches for web browsers, mail clients, and generally any gui based program since they are not installed or at least not functioning, and definitely not listenign to the outside world without me havign set it up that way very explicitly.
I do have to watch a very specific shortlist of products that need to be kept uptodate, and I'll get a message on my phone in case a critical bug in one of those products is published in any of the known ways.
Having this shortlist of products (FreeBSD core, openssl, openssh, Apache, PHP) makes it very managable, and in the end I don't have to update things that often.
It would also really help a lot if MS patches didn't break so much and so often. I can remember virtually every case where a FreeBSD patch managed to messup my system over the last 8 years, and the last one goes back to the 3.x era some years ago. It seldom happens, and its in fact so exceptional that I can run the risk of it happening on my production servers. The risk and consequences are waaay smaller then the much more likely breakins that would result if I dont apply the patches.
At any rate, it doesn't take much time, and it is very clear what I have to watch and patch to keep secure. That is one of the main problems with Windows, even when you are a competant admin, you have so many things to watch, and keep discovering new things all the time.
Yes, I do believe that MS can be blamed for that problem. Such a system is not suitable for anything other then connecting to an isolated and trusted local area network. THe fact that windows uses IP for many LAN orriented services makes the problem a lot worse.
Old argument and repeated often.
It is as wrong as it is old.
Untill it finally died in the early 90s as a 'current' platform, the Amiga has seen many times more virus problems then the PC, despite there being like at least 10x more PCs around.
If a platform makes it easy, and invites user behavior that helps propagating worm and virus code, that is when a platform becomes a viable and interesting target.. well, there need to be more then enough of them around, but really, anythign with 1%+ marketshare easily satisfies that.
Unless that door making company sold you a secure, auto locking, low attention needed door with lock, and the auto locking, low attention needed part turns out to be false and the door maker could easily have known it, and most conceivably actually did know it.
In proper commercial terms that is false advertising, in proper English that is called lying.
The day MS starts proclaiming everywhere that its software is NOT suitable for end users (and consumers) unless they have a professional administrator around who is going to spend AT LEAST 2 hours on their computer every week to keep it secure, till that day I will blame MS for selling a product that they know is broken, and selling it while claiming it is the exact opposite of broken.
That almost sounds like a real argument, it is not.
Both MS and those admins are responsible. MS for knowingly selling an unsafe system, and the admins for knowingly using it.
That MS systems still listen to the entire world on a whole variety of different ports is a huge part of the problem, and it not comming with a product like ZoneAlarm by default to at least mitigate the problem a bit is really a very significcant part of what makes worms like sasser go well.
The impopular platforms don't get targetted argument is old, and if you'd just take a peak at the insane amount of malware for the Amiga platform, you'd see how stupidl;y wrong the argument is proven to be by reality.
THe only partial truth in your argument is that the admins are aslo to be blamed.
> While both are necessary, seeing them individually shouldn't be. What he's referring to is making the individuality of the grains less apparent
They will not be apparant when they are small enough while beign displayed. Trying to remove the grain of a film by means of filters is seldom going to give you a better viewable result, most often it does exactly the opposite.
Its only of any use when the caputred material has a resolution lower then the display it is going to be shown on, and seeing the 4k lines/frame resolution and transcoding to DVD, that seems extremely unlikely. Thra grainyness of traditional movie film is still a lot better then the resolution of any consumer level medium, esp. DVD and (s)vhs (realize that such films have to look good on HUGE projection screens)
Capturing at this resolution is usefull for removing other imperfections and defects, all my original post was about is that the grainyness is not a defect, and that there is no point usually in removing it because it will simply not be visible on the display devices that are practical.
> all of the secondary processes will catch defects such as film grain.
Saying that film grain is a defect is like saying pixels are a defect..
I suggest leaving the doors of your house unlocked and when it is emptied by some thiefs get your insurance to pay for it.
Stealing is illegal but that doesn't mean you are not supposed to take REASONABLE measures to prevent it.
When a human can use concepts that are natural to a human (s)he has indeed a better chance to do the job right.
This was not about creating technically better admins but about getting the same quality of administration and usage while needing less technical knowledge.
Well, obviously we disagree on some points but it is an intemssting discussion. I am away for about a week (writing this on my pda while in the train to Berlin), thanks so far and lets see if we can continue it at some other time.
> Well, if we do, it'll be our first. Europe managed to start two in 50 years
Definitely.
Besides, I don't think the USA will start it directly. Its more like it being a major cause for the conditions that may trigger it.
Comming from a continent that triggered those 2 wars, and having had family involved on both sides, I think I have a bit of a background and can recognize fascist behavior in a government rather well. You have one there right now. Also, it involves itself in manipulation of the population, and is following one of the well known 'tricks' of many totalitarian governments, make the people 'feel' so they don't think and you can do what you want. You should really take a closer look at it, regardless of it being the motivation of the war against Iraq, the arguments in the current election campeign, it doesn't matter. Ensure you have the people fear things, make they believe you can save them and ensure they are reminded of it often enough to not start to think.
Then, the USA quite often forgets to look at the long term effects of its policies. That is more general then the current administration, and shows clearly from McArthur's mistake to cross the 'red line' in North Korea.
It is blatantly clear from supporting people like Bin Laden and Saddam (and the USA was not the only oen guilty of that in the case of Saddam either, blame on those others as well)
It is obvious from the failure to see what Saudi Arabia is really about (it is one of the most totalitarian and fundamentalist states on this planet, probably only surpassed by North Korea)
It is evident from supporting the Sjah of Iran at the time, despite knowing that he was directly responsible for gross violations of human rights. Better still, the CIA helped his secret service with 'more effective means of interrogation'.
(and you are really surprised that the average person in Iran doesn't have such warm feelings about the USA?)
Oh and lets not forget all those 'freedom loving' governments in the Southern Americas over the decades.
Ah yeah, then there is this little detail about financial support to the IRA.. Somehow those peopel were rebels regardless of them blowing up civilians and all that kind of stuff that in many other cases is called terrorism.
Once more, I don't hate the USA, nor its people. But I do believe there are some rather short sighted, if not utterly misguided ideas that are currently rather popular there, and the current administration is a good example of people with such ideas.
Then, I'd rather see people overthere wake up to a few facts regarding what their government is doing abroad and what it is causing. You must realize that no matter how horrible and completely unjustifiable the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were, they were not entirely unprovoked, and it is really time that you start seeing what exactly is provoking that (yeah, I know, there will always be idiots who want to do such things, but how can it be that they find the kind of support among people they need to actually pull it off? In most places such idiots end up either as the village idiot, in prison or in mental healthcare)
Btw, the attack on Madrid was different in that it served a direct political purpose on top of just trying to install fear, it had far less to do with revenge. Not that that makes any difference to the victims tho.
It is also rather interesting to see how both attacks were very succesfull due to the responses they caused. The USA went itno a security frenzy and removed quite a few freedoms, it let itself be triggered into very doubtfull behavior regarding human rights, and it got drawn into a war in the middle east (a logn stated goal of mr. Laden and friends)
The attack in Madrid managed to cause even more disharmony in the coalition, and expect similar events targetting other countries where it may be easy to cause them to partially withdraw. This is possible simply due to ignoring public opinion in countries like Spain.
It was indeed not meant to be a world government.
Ok, lets get a few things clear here.
1. The concept of the UN dates back to a time when the atomic bomb was not yet conceived, and it was not known yet if/how it could be made, the concept behind it was barely known.
You have to look back a few decades before 1945 to find its origins, the UN was a re-implementation of a failed idea.
Yeah, its purpose, among other things, was to prevent war in general, and world war III in particular.
When majority rule provides for guarantees for the rights of the minorities, it has shown to be by far the best system we know. It is why the USA is so proud of having a form of majority rule.
Your line of thought is popular but has a major flaw. If you do not allow the majority of the world to take pressing but non violent measures against a superpower that decides to just fuck up, then the only response is violence. When fighting a superpower, the choice will be unconventional violence also since there is little point in fighting the army of say the USA or China headon.
Now, before you come around and tell me that the USA doesn't have majority rule, strictly spoken, it is ruled by 'the elite', whom are supposedly elected representatives. THat means that the majority rules indirectly, not directly. That is very relevant because it solves one of the major issues with the idea of majority rule, but in the end it is still majority rule (tho one might argue that in case of the current administration its minority that rules by luck and the inability to properly count votes or hold an election)
Last but not least, the fact that the UN is not intended as, and should not be a world government in no way changes that its members are generally unwilling to accept minority rule. The longer a minority ignores such a situation, the more violent the restoration of balance of power will become.
> Seriously, there's not even enough to say "double standard" here.
Hmm, lets see.
Israel:
Violation of UN charter on multiple accounts, including illegal anexation of territory and war of aggression.
Suspected (..) of having and producing weapons of mass destruction (with help from the USA no less)
Refuses to let the IAEA inspect its nuclear facilities.
Ignorting UN resolutions.
Violating the Geneva conventions.
Iraq:
Violation of UN charter on multiple accounts, including attempted anexation of territory and war of aggression (once with support from most of the western world)
Suspected of owning and producing weapons of mass destruction (with help from Russia, France, Germany, The USA and others)
Obstructing inspections after having been forced to accept them by the UN security council.
Ignoring UN resolutions
Violating the Geneva conventions.
Are the circumstances different? yes. Are the results any different? not for the victims.
For as far as the UN charter is concerned (to which both states are a party), the above activities are illegal, regardless of motivation. War of aggression and anexation of territory are simply not permitted ever.
Hence the difference in underlying circumstances may be very relevant for determining the actual solution, but cannot be an excuse to sabotage any attempts to do something about it.
> Guess it's easier to hate the US than it is to see the problem that the UN created.
Not exactly, I guess it is easier to blame the UN for the consistant undermining by the former USSR and the USA mostly (China had a bit of a share as well)
Does the UN need reform? definitely. But one of the most needed reforms is getting rid of the veto. That would have meant that France would have been unable to sabotage the discussion about Iraq (maybe with the same, maybe with a different outcome) and it would stop the USA from sabotaging any efford to get a less one sided picture of the situation in the middle east.
> Not really relevant to this dicussion, sorry.
As you can read from the above, it is very relevant because in both cases the inaction of the UN is caused by the exact same thing.
Also, it is relevant because the USA uses the exact same argument to block any actions regarding the middle east (linking it to other unresolved situations)
> Heh. Well the only way we're going to fix our government is to radically change how people get into office in the first place. There is a lot of bad motivators out there to get into office, and a lot of crappy ways (i.e. abuse of the media) to get in there. It's not a matter of electing the right man, that's futile, it's a matter of removing those bad influences
And there I can agree completely.
> As for the 3rd world war, sorry, no, that's just not in our future. I don't doubt that more blood will be spilled, but it's very difficult to imagine that it'd escalate to nuclear proportions. A lot of things would have to change.
You really think so?
It may be hard to imagine from your point of view, but that would be because of being out of touch with what the behavior of the current administration is triggering outside the USA.
In the end the most dangerous part of what the current administration is doing is demonizing anyone who disagrees with them. That is simply bound to make you a lot of enemies. SO while they may not be the first one to hit the button, they very much create the circumstances in which dangerous idiots can gather popular support and do very foolish things.
Just to get something straigt, I do not believe the USA as such is evil, nor that its peopel are. I do however believe that there are a few very misguided ideas about the world that have gotten a hold there, esp. among the current administration and their closest supporters, but with a resonance among a much broader part of the population.
You can get away for a while with not caring about that rest of the world with regards to what they think and want, but seeing how they have like almost 20x the number of people, and happen to have most of the real dangerous tech as well, that is really not going to last, and is bound to backfire very badly. That is why I am saying they have a decent chance of triggering a 3rd world war, I wasn't so much saying they'd start it directly.
1867? make that 1967.. ;P
I can't type
> Yes, the US was eager to get it taken care of. They had an itchy trigger finger, so to speak.
Yeah.. which is exactly why many have a problem with it. An itchy trigger finger is likely to get you in jail, even in the USA, why would it be acceptable behavior from a country as a whole?
> Of course, in the space of 10 years or so, Saddam had racked up 17 UN violations. Pity Clinton didn't take care of it.
Ah, that sounds so good..
Untill you realize that big friend Israel has been racking about double that amount of resolutions since 1867 alone.. when is the USA gonna take action there?
Not to mention that the USA helped Sadam keep to power for a logn time first, just like those many other 'democratic' people they have kept in charge in so many other places around the world..
The bottomline is that GW and soem peopel he appointed to his government had an issue to settle with Sadam still. GW because he doesn't like peopel who try to kill his dad, and some peopel in his government because of wanting to finish what they had started when Bush senior was president.
The rest fof it was a partially made-up, and completely blown out of proportion argument to justify it.
You know what, that stupid attitude of the USA is making for a lot of trigger happy people around the world, and before you know it, 9/11 will look like a friendly and innocent incident.
Do something about people like Sadam? hell yes. BUT FUCKING STOP SUPPORTING SUCH PEOPLE TO BEGIN WITH. THat someoen may come in handy at a specific moment doesn't mean you can just ignore morality alltogether and support the person. The USA has made that mistake again and again and again and again, and now finds itself in a mess and has to clean it up.. gee, deal with it, buncha big whiners. Oh, and if you want to be anywhere believable regarding your big words of Freedom, Democracy, Human rights and so on, it would be a really really good idea to start with implementing them yourselves instead of tellign others what to do.
Luckily there are many Americans who are sick of the idiot attitude of their current government as well and don't want to be ruled by a bunch of lying fascists, I hope they manage to do something about it because the way things are now, the USA is going to cause a major war if not a 3rd world war.