I'm dissapointed that MS hasn't done a big enough push to get people accustomed to running as a limited user, versus running as Administrator all the time
There are 2 reasons why this doesn't work at the moment.
1) non-power-user don't even know what I limited-user account is (or that it even exists).
2) power-user usually use other OSes for day-to-day tasks, but keep Windows handy for gaming. However, 95% of the games won't work in limited-user mode... not because the game developpers are lousy and can't make a game that runs in limited-user -- I've been in the industry, most game could very well run in limited-user -- it's only the whole copy-protection thigny (or shall I say paranoia) that requires administrator account (because it has to play with a bunch of registers and hidden "system" files).
So even power-users sometimes have to run as administrator to do non-administrative tasks on their computer.
seeing as how you paid for the software with the reasonable expectation that it wouldn't contain a gaping hole of this nature.
With common sense, you sure can expect a certain level of quality. However, big corporations don't know what common sense is, and they make you "sign" some kind of license telling you that whatever they're selling you right now is coming without any warranty, 'as is', and that you shouldn't even expect it to do whatever work you bought it for.
From a standard license:
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS PROVIDE THE SOFTWARE "AS IS" AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY (IF ANY) IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OF LACK OF VIRUSES, AND OF LACK OF NEGLIGENCE OR LACK OF WORKMANLIKE EFFORT. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, OF QUIET ENJOYMENT, OR OF NONINFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU.
(Emphasis mine)
You're simply not allowed to expect your software to work. They don't even guarantee they didn't put a virus in there...
I'm still not convinced that this internet thing isn't a global spoof.
Come on people, wake up, not only the moon landing is fake, or even the Internet Telescope is fake... the whole Internet is fake! The government placed tiny little gnomes in your computer that simulate a global network, but all the while, you've only been chatting with gnomes. CONSPIRACY!!!
What will the government say, if the landing WAS fake and we manage to prove it?
They'll say "Well... we landed on the DARK side of the moon... the side you can never see from Earth, that's why you can't see it... yeah... that's why. When we get on Mars, we'll show you the proofs..."
However, this isn't only about developping OSS/FS, it's also (a lot) about using OSS/FS.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a web-server for some reason, and go for a OSS/FS web-server rather than Win2003.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a word processor to type reports and stuff, and go for OpenOffice rather than MSOffice.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a browser, and go for Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need an email client, and go for Thunderbird rather than Outlook express.
Heck, you can even develop a proprietary web-application and need an operating system for your desktop, and go for GNU/Linux rather than WinXP.
The whole speech about OSS/FS vs. proprietary is not only about making OSS/FS, it's also about using OSS/FS. It's still legal to produce proprietary software while using OSS/FS, the GPL is not viral.
I think its actually a *GOOD* idea that people are prevented from using outlook and or outlook express
What's funny with that is I've been having difficulties getting people switching from OE to Thunderbird as their mail client, because they all complained that Thunderbird didn't let them access their Hotmail account and OE was better at this...
I think Microsoft just made a very good marketing move on behalf of Thunderbird...:-D
You've hit on something here. The only way I could possibly learn Linux is through... my Cygwin environment at work, and my OS X Powerbook.
Totally right. Actually, does anyone know of a good website filled with tutorials on how to properly manage a Linux box, or better yet, a Linux network?
The lack of proper and easily accessible documentation makes it so schools are less likely to incorporate Linux into their programs.
I have certainly seen solid solutions on many different platforms over the years.
True, and one of the switch-backers didn't understand that because one particular application running on Linux fails, then the whole Linux idea fails.
"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said.
There was a limit set up within Windows that said you can only leave your computer running for 49.7 days straight... This isn't better, but it ain't worse either.
so much storage capacity that every episode of The Simpsons made could fit on just one
Now this is one thing I NEVER want to see happen... it's already bad enough that it takes up to 9 months to release season 5 while they're still shooting season like 16 (mostly because they don't have time to do all those DVD commentaries), if they had to wait till they could do the commentaries on all 20 (or however many seasons there will ever be), then by the time they're done, we'll be at a time when we'll say "Phew... you mean that disc can only hold one tiny terabyte?!?"
Give me my Simpsons on DVD and stop looking for new technology!
Re:It will work, but that isn't good, here is why
on
Broken Links No More?
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· Score: 1
This is the essence of what they have, and all they have done is coulded the search IP field (which is important) with 2 more patents
Anyone knows the number of those patents, I'd actually be interrested in reading them... to see if what my company is developping right now will be infringing...
strange, I've always thought that Canad had 2 seasons, autumn and winter
You should come to Montreal in April someday... the only place in the world where you can have all 4 seasons in a single day... From minus 10 Celcius with snow in the night to plus 20 Celcius in the afternoon...
Why even hire people ?? Here in Canada the counting is does by volunteers of each party.
It's not exactly that way. The counting is done by employees of the government, but it's done out loud, in front of a bunch of witnesses, among which there are up to 2 people representing each party. Only the witnesses are volunteers, the person who does the actual counting (taking the ballot, reading the ballot, saying who the ballots votes for, showing the ballot to all the witnesses) is employed and paid by Election Canada.
P.S. I know all that because my wife did exactly that at the last federal elections.
But it sounds like the Diebold flaws would be present regardless of their platform choice.
True, this is not a Windows flaw, it is a Dieblod flaw. However, if Diebold ran on another platform, it would probably take more than 5 lines of vbscript written in Notepad to decide who gets elected.
Part of having a stronger security is making it harder for the crackers to do things.
You don't need to install XP SP1 if you're going to install XP SP2.
I actually did all my Windows upgrades through Windows Update, which I launched again and again as long as it didn't tell me I didn't need any more critical updates.
Windows Update did require me to get SP1 first, then reboot, then get SP2...
I had forgotten an essential piece of software in the list... an anti-virus and a firewall. To cover those, I have Norton Internet Security 2004.
So basically, we got those numbers :
- WinXP, from scratch to first boot (not counting formatting) : 45 minutes (not only does the WinXP CD take forever to boot, after it has copied the installation files to disk, when the "GUI" appears, it says that there are 39 minutes left to installation) + 1 reboot
- Windows Updates till I don't need to update anymore : 40 minutes + 3 reboots.
- Norton Internet Security 2004 + Live Updates till I don't need to update anymore : 20 minutes + 2 reboots.
- Firefox 1.0PR : 2 minutes
- MS-Office XP (Word, Excel and Access) : 5 minutes (I'm actually impressed by this one, and no reboot required).
I can't find my Visual Studio CD at the moment, so I'm gonna stop here.
So to get a Windows box up and running (and useful), it took just under 2 hours of installing stuff (and 6 reboots). And I actually had to stay there waiting for 2 hours, because the Windows installer has that nasty habit of installing stuff for a couple of minutes, then popping up a window to ask you some info about which time zone you live in, then it installs some more, then pops another window to ask you about your network, then it installs some more and asks you about your keyboard...
Then came the Windows Updates. Some of them require you to accept a licence, so you can't leave the keyboard, and all the rebooting requires you to re-launch Windows Update. Same goes for the Live Updates of Norton Anti-Virus.
On the other hand though, from what I remember, my Mandrake 10 installation took somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes total, when I also couldn't wander very far away from the keyboard because of all those disc changes.
So, a regular Linux distro install isn't "a whole lot" faster than a Windows install. However, I do think it's much simplier. With Linux, you give all your info at first, tell the installer which packages you want, then click Install, and the computer only needs you to change CD's from then on. With a distro that would be on a DVD (I hear some of them already are), those disc changes would be eliminated and you could actually leave the computer after about only 15 minutes of configuration and the installer wouldn't bother you until your system is ready to use.
So installing Linux isn't necessarily faster than installing Windows, and to some people, it might not be easier. However, in my humble opinion, a Linux installer looks smarter than a Windows installer, since it gathers all the information it needs right from the start, and then leaves you alone afterwards. Plus, it doesn't need any rebooting at all.
My 2 cents...
P.S. I must also mention that my Windows box is behind a physical firewall, which prevented my computer to be hacked before I could get the updates... could have been much more complicated if I didn't have that.
P.P.S. I must also mention that I have no drivers installed yet, only the default drivers that come with Windows... meaning I can only have a resolution of 1280x1024 on my Radeon9800Pro:-S
and then they will ask for time to refute Randall's findings and perhaps come up with an expert witness of their own that finds thousands of "matches."
Don't forget how they will present it... "Your Honor, our expert witness here found thousands of matches that proves IBM stole our code. However, to preserve our IP, we cannot tell you what they are, but they are there... yes, they are..."
Here's a good idea... I just so happen to need to format and reinstall my Windows box tonight (I made the stupid mistake of installing the SP2... it totally nuked my system).
So right after format, I'll start the timer and install these:
Windows XP Home Windows XP Service Pack 1 Windows XP Service Pack 2 Firefox 1.0PR Adobe Acrobat Reader MS Office XP (full install) MS Visual Studio 6
And I'll stop the timer here.
I won't format and reinstall my Mandrake box though (for some reason, it doesn't *need* to be reinstalled), so we won't be able to compare exactly, but at least we'll have a very good estimate of how long it can take to have an up-to-date Windows box that on which I can actually get some work done. I bet it's more than 30 minutes...
It's also clear that during the interview process, they're gonna ask people how they found the answer. If you can detail your calculations or reasoning, you're in; if you say "I Googled the question and found the answer...", they'll say "Well, thanks for the flattery, but get the hell out"
If someone with far better French than me could provide a proper translation of the relevant paragraph I would be grateful
Here's a human translation from a French-Canadian
We must also note that, unsurprisingly, 95% of the computers are running on a Windows environment, with version 2000 being the most used among professionals. Win2k, running on 42% of the computers, largely replaced WinNT4, which now only runs on 16%. As for WinXP, it barely found a good public, especially among industrials which prefer Win2k 83% of the time. Only the service companies have 5% of their total computers running WinXP, while the general average is around 2%.
Although I agree the not every USian is as stupid as Bush, there are still millions of them who want Bush to stay for 4 more years... so it's not only 1 person, there are millions of people who believe bombing people all around the world helps peace and freedom, and who agree to the PATRIOT act and such.
I actually quite like a comment posted on the story that goes :
Perhaps that is why the proper name is OpenOffice.org. To quote:
Because of trademark issues, OpenOffice.org must insist that all public communications refer to the project and software as "OpenOffice.org" or "OpenOffice.org 1.0," and not "OpenOffice" or "Open Office."
Perhaps the Sun lawyers pulled a fast one over Microsoft!
Indeed... the quote comes from here, and it looks like it's been posted there more than a year ago. So technically, there is no such thing as OO or OpenOffice, there is only OOo or OpenOffice.org.
I really wonder how well that can hold up in court.
Imagine a few hundred thousand small claims cases were microsoft (someone to be determined obviously) had to show up and defend themselves, and without a lawyer with them.
In such cases, the company being sued (Microsoft in this case) can send any employee to represent them. Chances are Microsoft employs a bunch of lawyers, so they will obviously send a lawyer to court. So, unless you're a lawyer yourself, you're stuck one-on-one against someone who obviously knows more about laws than you do.
There's a lot of things done better in Mozilla through extensions.
For one, am I really forced to press ctrl to stop links from opening in a new window? And those links that use a new window, there's really no way to keep them in tabs?
I recommend the Mouse Gestures extension. I always open my links in a tab with gestures. That's the only thing I missed when I switched from the big O, but wouldn't switch back now.
Slashdot Mirror
Winter begins december 21st... If autumn ends in november, what is the season between november 30th and december 21st called???
There are 2 reasons why this doesn't work at the moment.
1) non-power-user don't even know what I limited-user account is (or that it even exists).
2) power-user usually use other OSes for day-to-day tasks, but keep Windows handy for gaming. However, 95% of the games won't work in limited-user mode... not because the game developpers are lousy and can't make a game that runs in limited-user -- I've been in the industry, most game could very well run in limited-user -- it's only the whole copy-protection thigny (or shall I say paranoia) that requires administrator account (because it has to play with a bunch of registers and hidden "system" files).
So even power-users sometimes have to run as administrator to do non-administrative tasks on their computer.
With common sense, you sure can expect a certain level of quality. However, big corporations don't know what common sense is, and they make you "sign" some kind of license telling you that whatever they're selling you right now is coming without any warranty, 'as is', and that you shouldn't even expect it to do whatever work you bought it for.
From a standard license :
DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTIES. MICROSOFT AND ITS SUPPLIERS PROVIDE THE SOFTWARE "AS IS" AND WITH ALL FAULTS, AND HEREBY DISCLAIM ALL OTHER WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY (IF ANY) IMPLIED WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF MERCHANTABILITY, OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OF LACK OF VIRUSES, AND OF LACK OF NEGLIGENCE OR LACK OF WORKMANLIKE EFFORT. ALSO, THERE IS NO WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF TITLE, OF QUIET ENJOYMENT, OR OF NONINFRINGEMENT. THE ENTIRE RISK ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS WITH YOU.
(Emphasis mine)
You're simply not allowed to expect your software to work. They don't even guarantee they didn't put a virus in there...
Come on people, wake up, not only the moon landing is fake, or even the Internet Telescope is fake... the whole Internet is fake! The government placed tiny little gnomes in your computer that simulate a global network, but all the while, you've only been chatting with gnomes. CONSPIRACY!!!
Ok... I'm gonna take my pills now
They'll say "Well... we landed on the DARK side of the moon... the side you can never see from Earth, that's why you can't see it... yeah... that's why. When we get on Mars, we'll show you the proofs..."
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a web-server for some reason, and go for a OSS/FS web-server rather than Win2003.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a word processor to type reports and stuff, and go for OpenOffice rather than MSOffice.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need a browser, and go for Firefox rather than Internet Explorer.
You can develop a proprietary application and still need an email client, and go for Thunderbird rather than Outlook express.
Heck, you can even develop a proprietary web-application and need an operating system for your desktop, and go for GNU/Linux rather than WinXP.
The whole speech about OSS/FS vs. proprietary is not only about making OSS/FS, it's also about using OSS/FS. It's still legal to produce proprietary software while using OSS/FS, the GPL is not viral.
Yep... and Nintendo is a Japanese company... ;-)
What's funny with that is I've been having difficulties getting people switching from OE to Thunderbird as their mail client, because they all complained that Thunderbird didn't let them access their Hotmail account and OE was better at this...
I think Microsoft just made a very good marketing move on behalf of Thunderbird... :-D
Totally right. Actually, does anyone know of a good website filled with tutorials on how to properly manage a Linux box, or better yet, a Linux network?
The lack of proper and easily accessible documentation makes it so schools are less likely to incorporate Linux into their programs.
True, and one of the switch-backers didn't understand that because one particular application running on Linux fails, then the whole Linux idea fails.
"There was a limit set up within the program that said you can only order 'x' amount of products within one transaction," Roy said.
There was a limit set up within Windows that said you can only leave your computer running for 49.7 days straight... This isn't better, but it ain't worse either.
Now this is one thing I NEVER want to see happen... it's already bad enough that it takes up to 9 months to release season 5 while they're still shooting season like 16 (mostly because they don't have time to do all those DVD commentaries), if they had to wait till they could do the commentaries on all 20 (or however many seasons there will ever be), then by the time they're done, we'll be at a time when we'll say "Phew... you mean that disc can only hold one tiny terabyte?!?"
Give me my Simpsons on DVD and stop looking for new technology!
Anyone knows the number of those patents, I'd actually be interrested in reading them... to see if what my company is developping right now will be infringing...
You should come to Montreal in April someday... the only place in the world where you can have all 4 seasons in a single day... From minus 10 Celcius with snow in the night to plus 20 Celcius in the afternoon...
It's not exactly that way. The counting is done by employees of the government, but it's done out loud, in front of a bunch of witnesses, among which there are up to 2 people representing each party. Only the witnesses are volunteers, the person who does the actual counting (taking the ballot, reading the ballot, saying who the ballots votes for, showing the ballot to all the witnesses) is employed and paid by Election Canada.
P.S. I know all that because my wife did exactly that at the last federal elections.
True, this is not a Windows flaw, it is a Dieblod flaw. However, if Diebold ran on another platform, it would probably take more than 5 lines of vbscript written in Notepad to decide who gets elected.
Part of having a stronger security is making it harder for the crackers to do things.
I actually did all my Windows upgrades through Windows Update, which I launched again and again as long as it didn't tell me I didn't need any more critical updates.
Windows Update did require me to get SP1 first, then reboot, then get SP2...
I had forgotten an essential piece of software in the list... an anti-virus and a firewall. To cover those, I have Norton Internet Security 2004.
So basically, we got those numbers :
- WinXP, from scratch to first boot (not counting formatting) : 45 minutes (not only does the WinXP CD take forever to boot, after it has copied the installation files to disk, when the "GUI" appears, it says that there are 39 minutes left to installation) + 1 reboot
- Windows Updates till I don't need to update anymore : 40 minutes + 3 reboots.
- Norton Internet Security 2004 + Live Updates till I don't need to update anymore : 20 minutes + 2 reboots.
- Firefox 1.0PR : 2 minutes
- MS-Office XP (Word, Excel and Access) : 5 minutes (I'm actually impressed by this one, and no reboot required).
I can't find my Visual Studio CD at the moment, so I'm gonna stop here.
So to get a Windows box up and running (and useful), it took just under 2 hours of installing stuff (and 6 reboots). And I actually had to stay there waiting for 2 hours, because the Windows installer has that nasty habit of installing stuff for a couple of minutes, then popping up a window to ask you some info about which time zone you live in, then it installs some more, then pops another window to ask you about your network, then it installs some more and asks you about your keyboard...
Then came the Windows Updates. Some of them require you to accept a licence, so you can't leave the keyboard, and all the rebooting requires you to re-launch Windows Update. Same goes for the Live Updates of Norton Anti-Virus.
On the other hand though, from what I remember, my Mandrake 10 installation took somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes total, when I also couldn't wander very far away from the keyboard because of all those disc changes.
So, a regular Linux distro install isn't "a whole lot" faster than a Windows install. However, I do think it's much simplier. With Linux, you give all your info at first, tell the installer which packages you want, then click Install, and the computer only needs you to change CD's from then on. With a distro that would be on a DVD (I hear some of them already are), those disc changes would be eliminated and you could actually leave the computer after about only 15 minutes of configuration and the installer wouldn't bother you until your system is ready to use.
So installing Linux isn't necessarily faster than installing Windows, and to some people, it might not be easier. However, in my humble opinion, a Linux installer looks smarter than a Windows installer, since it gathers all the information it needs right from the start, and then leaves you alone afterwards. Plus, it doesn't need any rebooting at all.
My 2 cents...
P.S. I must also mention that my Windows box is behind a physical firewall, which prevented my computer to be hacked before I could get the updates... could have been much more complicated if I didn't have that.
P.P.S. I must also mention that I have no drivers installed yet, only the default drivers that come with Windows... meaning I can only have a resolution of 1280x1024 on my Radeon9800Pro :-S
Don't forget how they will present it... "Your Honor, our expert witness here found thousands of matches that proves IBM stole our code. However, to preserve our IP, we cannot tell you what they are, but they are there... yes, they are..."
Here's a good idea... I just so happen to need to format and reinstall my Windows box tonight (I made the stupid mistake of installing the SP2... it totally nuked my system).
:
So right after format, I'll start the timer and install these
Windows XP Home
Windows XP Service Pack 1
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Firefox 1.0PR
Adobe Acrobat Reader
MS Office XP (full install)
MS Visual Studio 6
And I'll stop the timer here.
I won't format and reinstall my Mandrake box though (for some reason, it doesn't *need* to be reinstalled), so we won't be able to compare exactly, but at least we'll have a very good estimate of how long it can take to have an up-to-date Windows box that on which I can actually get some work done. I bet it's more than 30 minutes...
It's also clear that during the interview process, they're gonna ask people how they found the answer. If you can detail your calculations or reasoning, you're in; if you say "I Googled the question and found the answer...", they'll say "Well, thanks for the flattery, but get the hell out"
Here's a human translation from a French-Canadian
We must also note that, unsurprisingly, 95% of the computers are running on a Windows environment, with version 2000 being the most used among professionals. Win2k, running on 42% of the computers, largely replaced WinNT4, which now only runs on 16%. As for WinXP, it barely found a good public, especially among industrials which prefer Win2k 83% of the time. Only the service companies have 5% of their total computers running WinXP, while the general average is around 2%.
Although I agree the not every USian is as stupid as Bush, there are still millions of them who want Bush to stay for 4 more years... so it's not only 1 person, there are millions of people who believe bombing people all around the world helps peace and freedom, and who agree to the PATRIOT act and such.
Perhaps that is why the proper name is OpenOffice.org. To quote:
Because of trademark issues, OpenOffice.org must insist that all public communications refer to the project and software as "OpenOffice.org" or "OpenOffice.org 1.0," and not "OpenOffice" or "Open Office."
Perhaps the Sun lawyers pulled a fast one over Microsoft!
Indeed... the quote comes from here, and it looks like it's been posted there more than a year ago. So technically, there is no such thing as OO or OpenOffice, there is only OOo or OpenOffice.org.
I really wonder how well that can hold up in court.
In such cases, the company being sued (Microsoft in this case) can send any employee to represent them. Chances are Microsoft employs a bunch of lawyers, so they will obviously send a lawyer to court. So, unless you're a lawyer yourself, you're stuck one-on-one against someone who obviously knows more about laws than you do.
For educational purposes, could you point me to a page where there is an unrequested advertisement popup that Firefox doesn't block?
For one, am I really forced to press ctrl to stop links from opening in a new window? And those links that use a new window, there's really no way to keep them in tabs?
I recommend the Mouse Gestures extension. I always open my links in a tab with gestures. That's the only thing I missed when I switched from the big O, but wouldn't switch back now.