I'm banking that I'm the first one to say this, and that there are at least a few reasonable moderators out there.
This represents a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Perhaps as a community we need to face the possibility that they may be changing. I read the entire article, and it seemed as if Microsoft genuinely wanted to change. I run Linux, and so do a lot of you, so it is understandable when a lot of you will deride Windows no matter what because it represents a competitor. I just don't buy into that philosophy, it doesn't hold much room for fair.
Giant Anti-Spyware, IE 7, and the anti-vrus acquisitions are all good indications. Let us just hope, for the internet and personal computing's sake, that Microsoft doesn't blow it and charge for them. Either that, or blows it so hard their customers (corporate and power user home) all look for more stable operating systems (hint: all other consumer desktops of any note run a Unix derivative of one sort or another).
My friends have been asking me for something that could add Gmail and news headlines to the Google homepage. I saw a Slashdot post requesting the same thing, and someone wrote back: if you want that feature, do it yourself and whip up some code or scrape the data. Of course, why would my friends spend any time hacking this together when they could just get me to do it for them? - Brian Singerman, Software engineer on the Google Blog posting about the new portal.
Firstly, it doesn't clog up your Windows installation and slow down or crash your computer; in fact it speeds up your browsing. Secondly, you can turn it off, or uninstall it if you want. Thirdly, you only get it if you explicitly download it. Fourthly, it might actually improve Google's relevancy for search results and ads, which would benefit me directly.
Sixthly, it tells you very clearly in the installation process the dangers. On a separate screen from the legalese, in plain and bulleted english. You have to check a box to agree, and even the label for the box gives you some hint.
My interpretation was always that OpenOffice seems to lack in massive quantities the polish you see in Firefox. The user interface just feels clunky, the icons incongruous. There isn't padding in the right places and it doesn't feel native.
That was in many ways Firefox's advantage over Opera and Mozilla, it looked a lot better and cleaner. And don't lecture me on how software should be judged by quality instead of prettiness, I know that. You know that. But does the average user know that?
On a more serious note, how much protection does any adult need? Further, howbout making it so this protection is opt out? Yeah, I didn't think the Texas state legislature would have satisfactory answers to either question.
Google Mobile already does this to an extent, though I don't know about the compression part. It seems to take ordinary sites and condense them down to just the text delivered in XHTML. Check out this page (the first result for "test") then check out the full version. I actually kind of liked the stripped down version better, it communicates what it has to communicate and doesn't get in the way.
Folks... you're in a tent at the north pole... you don't need an internet connection to check on weather conditions! Just open the tent flap, for goodness' sake.
Submitter omitted information, they're checking real-time weather for Mexico City, the Bahamas, and Morocco. And trying desperately to pretend that they are there.
Some administrators take every opportunity to whinge and moan when Microsoft products have a security vulnerability. When Microsoft do the "right thing" (such as XP SP2), there is more whinging and moaning.
Some administrators whine and moan whenever they have to do work.
When will T-Mobile, SBC, Telarama, et al all realize their wifi business model sucks? I mean seriously, 5 bucks an hour, 20 bucks a month? For scattered coffee shops and book stores that I maybe frequent once a week? None of them has anything near enough coverage to make a subscription worth my while and their hourly rates are way too high. Maybe for a certain sector of the populace, those earning six figures and those who spend a lot of time in coffee shops, this is acceptable, but to middle america (where the real money is) it stinks. Maybe if they all pulled their resources and allowed me to log into any of their collective hot spots for a reasonable (~$15) monthly fee I'd consider it.
Oh agreed. I'm running it myself. Still, many people would have to be pried kicking and screaming. Even with a distribution as eye candy and usable as Ubuntu. The whole sudo thing would be over most of their heads, for starters. Not to mention the file system.
Send the effected customers (better yet, all customers) a CD with a free anti-virus, free anti-spyware, a free firewall, an alternative browser, and the latest updates for all of the above plus Windows and Office (including support for ME, NT, 2000, 98 SE, 98, and 95). With it include a letter explaining courtiously and simply why security is important. Sure, you'd probably have to get permission from a dozen different legal departments to do distribution of nominally free software on a wide scale like that, but some companies I know would jump at having their demo version shipped.
Back this up with your regular tech support. Yes, some users will be too clueless but a good deal won't. A fair percentage of the clueless ones will catch on quickly when their internet gets shut off and stays off. I can guarentee you the network traffic they'd get would drop to a third of the levels seen before.
Actually, in this perspective AOL's lackluster virus and spyware protection make perfect sense.
The radio links that provide data communication between the trains and the control center are encrypted, but how long until a hacker manages to crack it?
Before, or after, you made that comment?
Seriously 90% (based on my observations) of true hackers wouldn't do something that would threaten people's lives on that kind of scale. That excludes script kiddies. Just hope you haven't gone and put ideas in the other ~10%'s heads.
It was described as symbolizing the power of OSS. You know, people all chipping in and becoming powerful because of it. The reason it's African is because Mark Shuttleworth is.
Most of the people I've met who didn't like Linux tell me the same thing. "I tried (insert long since obsolete version of redhat, usually 4 or 5 point something) for a couple days and didn't like it."
I'm using Ubuntu 5.04 (hoary) and I have no plans to switch back to Windows except where necessary (school).
I get a little tired of Windows users saying "Linux is hard to use" when what they really mean is "It doesn't work like the system I know how to use and I'm too damn lazy to learn another", conveniently forgeting how long it took them to learn Windows in the first place.
Uh. At least in Windows everything is graphical. You only have to revert to the command line if you're a power user. In Linux the difference is stark. In order to install every other app you have to compile from source (yes, I already searched the repository) (and yes I Googled for RPMs). Just to play a.mov I had apply about 20 commands. Windows was never, ever this hard. If you're incompetent enough you just have to click okay and next about 5 times. Cut the bullcrap. Doesn't mean I'm not going to stick with Linux.
Any website you visit can write to the registry unless you've installed a third party blocker like Finjan's Surfin Guard Pro.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm banking that I'm the first one to say this, and that there are at least a few reasonable moderators out there.
This represents a step in the right direction for Microsoft. Perhaps as a community we need to face the possibility that they may be changing. I read the entire article, and it seemed as if Microsoft genuinely wanted to change. I run Linux, and so do a lot of you, so it is understandable when a lot of you will deride Windows no matter what because it represents a competitor. I just don't buy into that philosophy, it doesn't hold much room for fair.
Giant Anti-Spyware, IE 7, and the anti-vrus acquisitions are all good indications. Let us just hope, for the internet and personal computing's sake, that Microsoft doesn't blow it and charge for them. Either that, or blows it so hard their customers (corporate and power user home) all look for more stable operating systems (hint: all other consumer desktops of any note run a Unix derivative of one sort or another).
Now I can be stronger and look more like a dork at the same time! Woohoo! Booyah.
On a related note, check out the Japanese booth babes on the slide show.
(Just kidding honey, if you're reading this.)
Anyone else want to buy Roland and make him shut up?
My friends have been asking me for something that could add Gmail and news headlines to the Google homepage. I saw a Slashdot post requesting the same thing, and someone wrote back: if you want that feature, do it yourself and whip up some code or scrape the data. Of course, why would my friends spend any time hacking this together when they could just get me to do it for them? - Brian Singerman, Software engineer on the Google Blog posting about the new portal.
Somehow I think this explains it.
Firstly, it doesn't clog up your Windows installation and slow down or crash your computer; in fact it speeds up your browsing. Secondly, you can turn it off, or uninstall it if you want. Thirdly, you only get it if you explicitly download it. Fourthly, it might actually improve Google's relevancy for search results and ads, which would benefit me directly.
Sixthly, it tells you very clearly in the installation process the dangers. On a separate screen from the legalese, in plain and bulleted english. You have to check a box to agree, and even the label for the box gives you some hint.
So I'm guessing we've also solved that cancer thing or that AIDs thing already. Right?
My interpretation was always that OpenOffice seems to lack in massive quantities the polish you see in Firefox. The user interface just feels clunky, the icons incongruous. There isn't padding in the right places and it doesn't feel native.
That was in many ways Firefox's advantage over Opera and Mozilla, it looked a lot better and cleaner. And don't lecture me on how software should be judged by quality instead of prettiness, I know that. You know that. But does the average user know that?
The article that is referenced is here:r or.html
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-hor
In the post-Microsoft world I welcome our communist Linux overlords.
This bill protects truckers...adult content.
Don't make me laugh.
On a more serious note, how much protection does any adult need? Further, howbout making it so this protection is opt out? Yeah, I didn't think the Texas state legislature would have satisfactory answers to either question.
Google Mobile already does this to an extent, though I don't know about the compression part. It seems to take ordinary sites and condense them down to just the text delivered in XHTML. Check out this page (the first result for "test") then check out the full version. I actually kind of liked the stripped down version better, it communicates what it has to communicate and doesn't get in the way.
I was actually attempting be funny. I have no idea where they're checking weather for. But yeah, your idea was better as indicated by the +5.
Now if the update system would just not require a reinstall.
According to the devs this is scheduled for 1.1.
Folks... you're in a tent at the north pole... you don't need an internet connection to check on weather conditions! Just open the tent flap, for goodness' sake.
Submitter omitted information, they're checking real-time weather for Mexico City, the Bahamas, and Morocco. And trying desperately to pretend that they are there.
Some administrators take every opportunity to whinge and moan when Microsoft products have a security vulnerability. When Microsoft do the "right thing" (such as XP SP2), there is more whinging and moaning .
Some administrators whine and moan whenever they have to do work.
When will T-Mobile, SBC, Telarama, et al all realize their wifi business model sucks? I mean seriously, 5 bucks an hour, 20 bucks a month? For scattered coffee shops and book stores that I maybe frequent once a week? None of them has anything near enough coverage to make a subscription worth my while and their hourly rates are way too high. Maybe for a certain sector of the populace, those earning six figures and those who spend a lot of time in coffee shops, this is acceptable, but to middle america (where the real money is) it stinks. Maybe if they all pulled their resources and allowed me to log into any of their collective hot spots for a reasonable (~$15) monthly fee I'd consider it.
Oh agreed. I'm running it myself. Still, many people would have to be pried kicking and screaming. Even with a distribution as eye candy and usable as Ubuntu. The whole sudo thing would be over most of their heads, for starters. Not to mention the file system.
Send the effected customers (better yet, all customers) a CD with a free anti-virus, free anti-spyware, a free firewall, an alternative browser, and the latest updates for all of the above plus Windows and Office (including support for ME, NT, 2000, 98 SE, 98, and 95). With it include a letter explaining courtiously and simply why security is important. Sure, you'd probably have to get permission from a dozen different legal departments to do distribution of nominally free software on a wide scale like that, but some companies I know would jump at having their demo version shipped.
Back this up with your regular tech support. Yes, some users will be too clueless but a good deal won't. A fair percentage of the clueless ones will catch on quickly when their internet gets shut off and stays off. I can guarentee you the network traffic they'd get would drop to a third of the levels seen before.
Actually, in this perspective AOL's lackluster virus and spyware protection make perfect sense.
The radio links that provide data communication between the trains and the control center are encrypted, but how long until a hacker manages to crack it?
Before, or after, you made that comment?
Seriously 90% (based on my observations) of true hackers wouldn't do something that would threaten people's lives on that kind of scale. That excludes script kiddies. Just hope you haven't gone and put ideas in the other ~10%'s heads.
It was described as symbolizing the power of OSS. You know, people all chipping in and becoming powerful because of it. The reason it's African is because Mark Shuttleworth is.
There may be some system of authenticating sender ID, and will be as easy as getting ppl to use pk encryption.
You over-estimate the average computer user.
If you're thinking of a transparent solution then you under-estimate how fragmented the e-mail client "industry" is.
This may be true, but is it just maybe possible that they went their own way for some sort of *gasp* rational reason?
For the clueless among us, it looks like they're trying (and sorta failing) to emulate Schoolhouse Rock.
Slashdot posts about a legal threat in a town called Gaylord and there isn't yet a 5 Funny modded post yet?
Shame on you all, I expected better.
Most of the people I've met who didn't like Linux tell me the same thing. "I tried (insert long since obsolete version of redhat, usually 4 or 5 point something) for a couple days and didn't like it."
.mov I had apply about 20 commands. Windows was never, ever this hard. If you're incompetent enough you just have to click okay and next about 5 times. Cut the bullcrap. Doesn't mean I'm not going to stick with Linux.
I'm using Ubuntu 5.04 (hoary) and I have no plans to switch back to Windows except where necessary (school).
I get a little tired of Windows users saying "Linux is hard to use" when what they really mean is "It doesn't work like the system I know how to use and I'm too damn lazy to learn another", conveniently forgeting how long it took them to learn Windows in the first place.
Uh. At least in Windows everything is graphical. You only have to revert to the command line if you're a power user. In Linux the difference is stark. In order to install every other app you have to compile from source (yes, I already searched the repository) (and yes I Googled for RPMs). Just to play a
Any website you visit can write to the registry unless you've installed a third party blocker like Finjan's Surfin Guard Pro.
Using an unpatched Internet Explorer, maybe.