As a user of MS products all the way from MS-DOS to Windows XP, I must say that Mandrake (10.0) greatly impressed me when I loaded it, and it continues to do so. Kudos to MandrakeSoft for making such a great product, and I'm glad that they're making it better all the time.:-)
I've found that all the spyware can be kept down to basically zero if you do what I do (even for Windows users).
I use Firefox and not IE (it's interesting to look at how many hits ad-aware gets for tracking cookies etc. with IE)... And speaking of ad-aware, I run it regularly.
Honestly, spyware statistics would go way way down if people ran an anti-spyware program now and then. I find in my experience, when you run it for the first time and get 500 - 1500 "objects" found, it wakes the user up as to what sort of crap is on there, and after that they seem to be pretty good about running it themselves.
No worries... my computers are in the basement, which is nice and cool in the summer... so my hand will be just fine. Now, all those people with upstairs computers might not be so lucky.
Well, you might take into consideration what sort of users you have. In my school's computer lab I often work on one particular computer (it's the one in the corner), and that's because it has all the stuff I really use loaded on it (i.e. IRC / AIM), as well as I keep it clean from spyware, defrag the HD, et cetera, et cetera. That's pretty much why I'm always at that one - you might get that a lot with computer types.
I seriously use DCC for things other than pirating. DCC is commonly used by my particular group to pass along logs, interesting documents, proposals & updates, et cetera. In a sense you might say it's like P2P - it's used by a lot of filesharers / pirates - but it's not the exclusive domain of those types.
Well, I for one think this will be quite good. It's very frustrating to try to DCC a document to somebody only to have it fail for a variety of reasons. I look forward to improving this standard.:-)
On the other hand, this does improve the IRC-for-filesharing thing that I've seen... way back in the day before Kazaa, my friends used to pick up their movies etc. from IRC channels... so this will facilitate that, I suppose... possibly not what the authors have in mind.
IMHO the reduction won't affect serious computer users except in terms of the cost. If it costs me $50 more to get the 1GB of DDR RAM, well, I'll probably pay it.
Where it will hurt people is the technologically illiterate, who simply take the default Dell configuration or whatever and then wonder why their systems are always low on RAM.
I agree entirely. I spent the first ~9 years of my education in a system where you were forced to manage your own time and could learn at pretty much your own speed (within some limits). Having switched to a more restrictive sort of environment for highschool, I definitely see people who can move ahead, but don't, because they're given the same level of work as everyone else.
Fortunately, some schools do have advanced programs, and in others you can simply skip grades if you can teach yourself the material (or, if you're lucky, your school has both!). This definitely allows overperformers to work at a level that is much more suited to their abilities.
1) As they get older... there should be a math stream for kids who are good at math, a science stream for people who are good at science, and one of each for people who are just not good at either. Really, there are people like that, and putting them in the same class with the really smart kids just discourages them from continuing. Happens to grade 9s at my highschool all the time.
2) This is more the case for math, but there should be an emphasis on investigating real things out there. In some book somewhere the lesson on circumference of a circle is taught with an activity involving cookies. Showing kids how their math applies to real life (instead of a boring jumble of numbers and symbols) will help to keep them interested in it.
3)In Science: More labs and investigations. I don't know how this is with other school systems, but I find in mine we do a very limited number of labs and a lot of sitting and listening in science classes. This may work wonders for visual and auditory learners, but for people who learn by doing (I'm one of them), there's nothing I like more than breaking out the lab equipment and doing the lab. This also ties to my second point - you can see how these things apply in real life.
There are many more points, I'm sure, but these are just three quick ones off the top of my head.
This reminds me. Somebody mentioned to me long long ago that he'd like to know if it would be possible to get a buffer overflow on an OCR engine with some code written on the page.
The ISP might not see anything as they wouldn't be able to connect to the server, but wouldn't they notice a large amount of traffic going in and out on FTP protocol?
Disclaimer: IANAL, but my father is.
As has been said, it's Microsoft's goal, as a corporation, to attain as much profit as they are able to. But it's also the duty of the government to protect their citizens - including protecting them from a market where there is no choice.
I've read that the Reagan administration pretty well gutted a good number of antitrust laws, and those are the sort of things that try to keep corporations in check. I, for one, am not anywhere near as pro-business as the Republican Party of the US is (and I'm a Canadian), and I am very much in favour of stringent regulations to prevent abuses of the system.
While Microsoft has indeed come out ahead in the preceding legal cases, that doesn't mean that we can't change that for the future. The introduction of new laws or revision of existing ones would certainly be a way to do it. For cases where they've won, Microsoft has precedent on their side, and that can be a powerful legal advantage. By replacing the existing laws, that advantage can be negated, and the present failings in the regulatory system addressed.
And, as I think of it, governments may want to think of it like disciplining a child. A fine may deter a company, but if it doesn't, you don't keep fining them in the hopes that the repetition will make it more effective. If your current measures aren't working, you switch to new ones. I'm reminded of an analogy somebody once made about World War One:
Commanding Officer: "Let's rush the other guy's trenches!"
*A little later*
"Sir, the rush failed. Most of the men are dead or wounded."
The commanding officer: "Let's do it again! I'm sure it'll work *this* time!"
Would you allow me to install some software on your phone line that would interject with advertisements from time to time?
Incidentally I recall hearing somewhere that someday soon you might be able to make long distance calls that are paid for by advertising (i.e. an ad is interjected here and there. The difference, though, is choice. You are choosing to use the ad-sponsored phone calls, not having them forced upon you.
I wonder, though, if they'll actually be able to offer 1GB per account for very long. And I also somewhat wonder if this won't become a filesharing tool as well? Just e-mail your movies or whole MP3 library to anyone who asks for it?
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As a user of MS products all the way from MS-DOS to Windows XP, I must say that Mandrake (10.0) greatly impressed me when I loaded it, and it continues to do so. Kudos to MandrakeSoft for making such a great product, and I'm glad that they're making it better all the time. :-)
I look forward to trying out 10.1 beta....
I've found that all the spyware can be kept down to basically zero if you do what I do (even for Windows users). I use Firefox and not IE (it's interesting to look at how many hits ad-aware gets for tracking cookies etc. with IE)... And speaking of ad-aware, I run it regularly. Honestly, spyware statistics would go way way down if people ran an anti-spyware program now and then. I find in my experience, when you run it for the first time and get 500 - 1500 "objects" found, it wakes the user up as to what sort of crap is on there, and after that they seem to be pretty good about running it themselves.
No worries... my computers are in the basement, which is nice and cool in the summer... so my hand will be just fine. Now, all those people with upstairs computers might not be so lucky.
Well, you might take into consideration what sort of users you have. In my school's computer lab I often work on one particular computer (it's the one in the corner), and that's because it has all the stuff I really use loaded on it (i.e. IRC / AIM), as well as I keep it clean from spyware, defrag the HD, et cetera, et cetera. That's pretty much why I'm always at that one - you might get that a lot with computer types.
I seriously use DCC for things other than pirating. DCC is commonly used by my particular group to pass along logs, interesting documents, proposals & updates, et cetera. In a sense you might say it's like P2P - it's used by a lot of filesharers / pirates - but it's not the exclusive domain of those types.
Well, I for one think this will be quite good. It's very frustrating to try to DCC a document to somebody only to have it fail for a variety of reasons. I look forward to improving this standard. :-)
On the other hand, this does improve the IRC-for-filesharing thing that I've seen... way back in the day before Kazaa, my friends used to pick up their movies etc. from IRC channels... so this will facilitate that, I suppose... possibly not what the authors have in mind.
IMHO the reduction won't affect serious computer users except in terms of the cost. If it costs me $50 more to get the 1GB of DDR RAM, well, I'll probably pay it.
Where it will hurt people is the technologically illiterate, who simply take the default Dell configuration or whatever and then wonder why their systems are always low on RAM.
If google does go ahead with the IPO I suspect there will be a lot of interested people who pick up shares. A good number are probably slashdotters :P
What if, though, some large company (i.e. M$) buys a huge chunk of google. Can you imagine what would happen if they became the majority owners?
I agree entirely. I spent the first ~9 years of my education in a system where you were forced to manage your own time and could learn at pretty much your own speed (within some limits). Having switched to a more restrictive sort of environment for highschool, I definitely see people who can move ahead, but don't, because they're given the same level of work as everyone else.
Fortunately, some schools do have advanced programs, and in others you can simply skip grades if you can teach yourself the material (or, if you're lucky, your school has both!). This definitely allows overperformers to work at a level that is much more suited to their abilities.
1) As they get older... there should be a math stream for kids who are good at math, a science stream for people who are good at science, and one of each for people who are just not good at either. Really, there are people like that, and putting them in the same class with the really smart kids just discourages them from continuing. Happens to grade 9s at my highschool all the time.
2) This is more the case for math, but there should be an emphasis on investigating real things out there. In some book somewhere the lesson on circumference of a circle is taught with an activity involving cookies. Showing kids how their math applies to real life (instead of a boring jumble of numbers and symbols) will help to keep them interested in it.
3)In Science: More labs and investigations. I don't know how this is with other school systems, but I find in mine we do a very limited number of labs and a lot of sitting and listening in science classes. This may work wonders for visual and auditory learners, but for people who learn by doing (I'm one of them), there's nothing I like more than breaking out the lab equipment and doing the lab. This also ties to my second point - you can see how these things apply in real life.
There are many more points, I'm sure, but these are just three quick ones off the top of my head.
This reminds me. Somebody mentioned to me long long ago that he'd like to know if it would be possible to get a buffer overflow on an OCR engine with some code written on the page.
The ISP might not see anything as they wouldn't be able to connect to the server, but wouldn't they notice a large amount of traffic going in and out on FTP protocol?
Disclaimer: IANAL, but my father is. As has been said, it's Microsoft's goal, as a corporation, to attain as much profit as they are able to. But it's also the duty of the government to protect their citizens - including protecting them from a market where there is no choice. I've read that the Reagan administration pretty well gutted a good number of antitrust laws, and those are the sort of things that try to keep corporations in check. I, for one, am not anywhere near as pro-business as the Republican Party of the US is (and I'm a Canadian), and I am very much in favour of stringent regulations to prevent abuses of the system. While Microsoft has indeed come out ahead in the preceding legal cases, that doesn't mean that we can't change that for the future. The introduction of new laws or revision of existing ones would certainly be a way to do it. For cases where they've won, Microsoft has precedent on their side, and that can be a powerful legal advantage. By replacing the existing laws, that advantage can be negated, and the present failings in the regulatory system addressed. And, as I think of it, governments may want to think of it like disciplining a child. A fine may deter a company, but if it doesn't, you don't keep fining them in the hopes that the repetition will make it more effective. If your current measures aren't working, you switch to new ones. I'm reminded of an analogy somebody once made about World War One: Commanding Officer: "Let's rush the other guy's trenches!" *A little later* "Sir, the rush failed. Most of the men are dead or wounded." The commanding officer: "Let's do it again! I'm sure it'll work *this* time!"
Would you allow me to install some software on your phone line that would interject with advertisements from time to time? Incidentally I recall hearing somewhere that someday soon you might be able to make long distance calls that are paid for by advertising (i.e. an ad is interjected here and there. The difference, though, is choice. You are choosing to use the ad-sponsored phone calls, not having them forced upon you.
I'm a Torontonian as well, and Linux also got the business section of the National Post this week. I read that one, but not the ones in the Star.
I wonder, though, if they'll actually be able to offer 1GB per account for very long. And I also somewhat wonder if this won't become a filesharing tool as well? Just e-mail your movies or whole MP3 library to anyone who asks for it?