I don't know if you mean absurd in that it's a horrible argument to make, or absurd in that it's unbelievable that Microsoft could be so inconsistent. I would tend to argue that it's the latter.
Yes, I intended the latter. To see that screenshot is bad enough, because it's not just that different applications have different skins. Worse than different skins, different applications are laid out differently, so very similar controls will be in different places. Even worse than that, different applications will behave differently. As the author notes, Different Vista applications from Microsoft hide the menu bar (including Office 2007 and IE7), but they all do it in different ways, and the user has to use a different method to gain access to them.
You brought up weirdness with Microsoft Office and the MDI/SDI stuff. Now I'm using Office 2003, and I notice that when I open several Excel documents, they all open in sub-windows of the same window, but each document gets its own button on the taskbar. I don't know of any other applications that behave that way.
That makes me wonder, is Microsoft's financial success/trouble follow the general tech-sector's success/trouble, or is the tech sector following Microsoft?
I'm suprised the RIAA isn't bringing up the RIO lawsuit again and try to fight iPods and other external hard drives as massive tools of infringement. The record industry has recently suggested that they should get a cut of profits on all hard drive sales.
Good point. Also, I think the real goal of the RIAA is to shape public perception. There are two ways of looking at this whole "file sharing" thing. Either:
This is all about the steady march of progress, and the interplay between changes in technology and changes in society. The record industry originated out of new technology that allowed sound to be recorded, and will undergo some change as physical distribution becomes obsolete. So it goes.
-or-
This is all about people who lack a sense of fairness, trying to get something for nothing. People are tearing down societal rules and mores in order to satisfy their immediate urges without any consideration for the damage they're doing to our current system. Our current system works and is good, and to dismantle it is needless destruction.
Now obviously the record industry would like us all to accept the second explanation. But really, right now they only need older people to accept the second explanation, because older people tend to have more power. It's lucky for them, since older people are tend to dislike change, and tend to see things exactly in this way.
And who do older people usually think are "trying to get something for nothing" and "tearing down societal rules and mores... without any consideration for the damage they're doing to our current system"? Young people. Therefore, if they are targeting college kids specifically, it's probably a pretty crafty move.
I mean, they may as well group "file sharing" in with drug use, promiscuous and unprotected sex, binge drinking, drag racing, school shootings, and rap music. Forget the fact that the whole internet is really a large P2P system, and "P2P protocols" are just a more advanced method of distributing load. Oh, and pay no attention to the fact that the music industry itself used to be that scary/subversive thing that old people feared.
... but I understood the author to be implying that there were undocumented behaviors of otherwise documented APIs, meaning that programmers could try to do something sensible and get unexpected results.
Now I don't really know if that's true, but his comments about Microsofts UI choices are certainly true. OSX and Linux DEs may have some inconsistencies here and there, but that screenshot in the article is absurd.
The only problem with that is that sometimes bugs pop up from the interaction between packages. They can't just drop back to "stable" packages because the packages need to be tested together.
I don't suppose I'd disagree with that too much (I use Debian stable for production servers). On the other hand, it's worth noting that some people have been frustrated by Debian's release schedule.
Also, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that using Debian stable guarantees that you won't run into any bugs. In fact, sometimes running Debian stable means you're going to be dealing with the same bugs for much longer. Still, sometimes it's easier to deal with the devil you know...
Anyway, yes, so if you're doing something where stability is incredibly important, I wouldn't recommend using cutting-edge stuff. You might want to stick with Debian stable or stay one release behind with Ubuntu.
I guess I just figure that a lot of "stable" software won't really have all the kinks ironed out until after release. When something is released, it's probably going to put onto hardware that no one was testing on, and it's probably going to be used in ways that it wasn't used during testing.
I agree that if there are known major bugs that will be extremely common, or bugs that are show-stoppers (e.g. cause significant data loss), then release should be pushed back. But if you want something extremely stable, then you might consider holding back your upgrade for a little while.
But I'm not making an argument from principle. I'm just saying that, from experience, I've never seen anyone get something 100% bug-free. Even Debian stable can have some quirks. So I'd rather have a regular release schedule than have progress on Ubuntu held back until every little bug can be worked out.
Meh... I wouldn't be surprised if I pissed someone off and they purposefully put me on spam lists somehow. Anyway, I'm not surprised that I'm getting flooded with spam, but I'm just saying that I know from experience that Gmail's filters don't get everything. I got about 20 spam messages that made it into my inbox just over the weekend.
Yes, but on the other hand, I've found Ubuntu to generally provide better hardware support than Vista. Also, while Windows tends to make you install drivers, more things seem to be supported in Linux without any user intervention.
So overall, I probably would say that Ubuntu offers very good hardware support.
I'm a bit split on this, I guess. It seems like they shouldn't release an unfinished product, but on the other hand I like that they actually stick to a 6-month release schedule.
I think I'd rather see them releasing every 6 months as best they can, and if during my testing I run across any showstopper bugs, I'll stick with an older version. After all, that older version will be (at most) 6 months old.
In my experience, incompetent systems administration can make anything work only "most of the time", regardless of how reliable it was designed to be.
In my experience, a lot of problems are caused by incompetent systems administration, but even more are caused by stupid defaults on software. Because often the "incompetent systems admins" will set up software and leave it in the default configuration.
So you're right that no system, however reliable, will stop stupid/malicious people from messing things up. However, a good system can prevent careless people from causing problems under normal circumstances.
The reason I'm pointing this out is everyone is so quick to blame problems on incompetent admins, saying, "Well of course they should have set up there server with [insert spam solution here]!" And then of course people are afraid to even ask how to implement said spam solution because you've just been told their incompetent morons for failing to already have it set up. After a little bit of searching the internet, they'll see other posts where people are saying, "I don't want to use [insert spam solution here] because it causes [insert problem here] and doesn't really work anyway!"
However, if e-mail software just came pre-installed with "proper settings" (whatever those proper settings are) or at least clear instructions on best practices, some of those "incompetent admins" would do a better job.
Not me. I get endless spam in Japanese-- or at least I think it's Japanese-- and spanish. Loads of it, and I keep marking it as spam, and it keeps coming straight through Gmail's filters. In the past 6 months, I've started getting spam in English too, including phishing e-mails for E-Bay and PayPal.
Now, admittedly, my e-mail address is public on Slashdot, without obfuscation, so I'm pretty much asking for it. But don't tell me that their spam filters catch everything.
I feel like it's important to note that, most often, "hype" is not "just hype".
What I mean is, lots of things in life are over-hyped, but the hype usually comes from somewhere. There is something within the over-hyped thing that people are genuinely excited about, impressed with, or desirous of. They may have trouble explaining the true source of their excitement, but if you can find that source of excitement, you'll usually find something worthwhile.
So although Rails was over-hyped by some people, we may not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
...and maybe it won't? Maybe the moon is made of cheese, but maybe it isn't! who's to say?! This isn't news, it's a conversation starter for people who enjoy arguing.
Right, and it's perfectly feasible to build a nuclear reactor small enough to integrate into a suit like that, powerful enough to meet the energy requirements, and safe enough to also put a man into the same suit?
For once, it looks to be at least within the realm of possible science...Oh, and none of the "I got bitten by a mutant spider/got exposed to gamma ray/etc" crap that is usually associated with american super-heroes.
Of course, there are somewhat realistic aspects of the suit, but there are still problems. Notably, how are you going to generate power, how do you make something that sleek-looking also structurally sound enough to pull off the stunts he pulls, and how are you going to actually fly that suit.
It's realistic in about the same way as the whole "I got hit with radiation, was mutated, and gained super powers." Sure, you could argue that it's scientific because radiation can mutate living cells. But that doesn't mean the whole thing is scientific.
In fact, current quality/bandwidth/multiplatform champion is Realvideo 10 and it is MPEG4 based too. Of course it is a bit hard to convince user to install it even while Real gives whole thing (except codecs) as open source. You know, history haunting.
I think part of the issue is that some of us just don't want to install another player. As a general policy, whether my own machine or some other machine I'm supporting, I don't want to install a single piece of software that I don't have to. Every piece of software is another thing to keep track of, another potential bug, security risk, software conflict, or other problem. I'd much rather use a single media player for the sake of simplicity and consistency. I'd rather install a codec than install a new player, and I'd rather not even have to install a new codec.
So yes, VP6 and VP7 produce good quality (I'd argue that Spark isn't so great). However, until they get better support in Quicktime, WMP, and FFMPEG, I'll view them as a PITA to deal with and "not worth the trouble".
If Journaling was on, there should not have been anyone 'manually copying to PST', it should have been automatic based on filters, it makes no sense.
Maybe we're talking about different features, or things have changed in Exchange 2007. I run Exchange 2003, and it provides an option make a copy of all messages that have been sent or received, and then store that copy in a specific user's mailbox. So I have a specific user on my server that receives a copy of every message that is sent or received by my Exchange server. I've seen this referred to as "journaling".
However, all that e-mail just sits in that mailbox on my server unless I do something with it. So it's not really "archived", it's just sitting on the Exchange server, taking up space in the mail store. What I gathered from the article was that the White House had applied this same technique, and when they wanted free up space for the mail store, they moved the files from that "journaling" mailbox to PST files, and they did that manually.
However, you can buy software that will automatically dump the contents of that mailbox into a real database (SQL server, for example), and then it also provides a web interface for searching through those files. This is a much safer (and smarter) solution than manually moving messages to a PST.
I think that's what they did. They turned on journaling, and then archived the journaling account to PST files.
Unfortunately, this meant that a person was manually copying to PST, which introduces an opportunity for either human error or tampering. In addition, PST files aren't very good for this sort of archive. They've long had a history of getting corrupt as they grow in size, they're hard to search, and they don't have much in the way of built-in security controls. It'd be better to dump the files into a DB that could then be accessed any number of ways.
I didn't get that from the summary, but this is one case where it really isn't Microsoft's fault. There are plenty of archiving systems built for Exchange, and some of them are really simple to install. Even if it weren't an ideal system, they could have gotten some kind of system up and running in a couple of hours, and it would be better than having people move messages into PST files.
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Yes, I intended the latter. To see that screenshot is bad enough, because it's not just that different applications have different skins. Worse than different skins, different applications are laid out differently, so very similar controls will be in different places. Even worse than that, different applications will behave differently. As the author notes, Different Vista applications from Microsoft hide the menu bar (including Office 2007 and IE7), but they all do it in different ways, and the user has to use a different method to gain access to them.
You brought up weirdness with Microsoft Office and the MDI/SDI stuff. Now I'm using Office 2003, and I notice that when I open several Excel documents, they all open in sub-windows of the same window, but each document gets its own button on the taskbar. I don't know of any other applications that behave that way.
That makes me wonder, is Microsoft's financial success/trouble follow the general tech-sector's success/trouble, or is the tech sector following Microsoft?
Good point. Also, I think the real goal of the RIAA is to shape public perception. There are two ways of looking at this whole "file sharing" thing. Either:
-or-
Now obviously the record industry would like us all to accept the second explanation. But really, right now they only need older people to accept the second explanation, because older people tend to have more power. It's lucky for them, since older people are tend to dislike change, and tend to see things exactly in this way.
And who do older people usually think are "trying to get something for nothing" and "tearing down societal rules and mores... without any consideration for the damage they're doing to our current system"? Young people. Therefore, if they are targeting college kids specifically, it's probably a pretty crafty move.
I mean, they may as well group "file sharing" in with drug use, promiscuous and unprotected sex, binge drinking, drag racing, school shootings, and rap music. Forget the fact that the whole internet is really a large P2P system, and "P2P protocols" are just a more advanced method of distributing load. Oh, and pay no attention to the fact that the music industry itself used to be that scary/subversive thing that old people feared.
So you came all the way in here just to complain that the article is correct but not all that interesting to you?
Warning: I'm not a programmer...
... but I understood the author to be implying that there were undocumented behaviors of otherwise documented APIs, meaning that programmers could try to do something sensible and get unexpected results.
Now I don't really know if that's true, but his comments about Microsofts UI choices are certainly true. OSX and Linux DEs may have some inconsistencies here and there, but that screenshot in the article is absurd.
... so you're saying that people shouldn't complain anymore because they've already been complaining for decades?
Maybe that could just contribute to WINE and then install it on their new OS.
The only problem with that is that sometimes bugs pop up from the interaction between packages. They can't just drop back to "stable" packages because the packages need to be tested together.
"If you want stability, use Debian."
I don't suppose I'd disagree with that too much (I use Debian stable for production servers). On the other hand, it's worth noting that some people have been frustrated by Debian's release schedule.
Also, let's not fool ourselves into thinking that using Debian stable guarantees that you won't run into any bugs. In fact, sometimes running Debian stable means you're going to be dealing with the same bugs for much longer. Still, sometimes it's easier to deal with the devil you know...
Anyway, yes, so if you're doing something where stability is incredibly important, I wouldn't recommend using cutting-edge stuff. You might want to stick with Debian stable or stay one release behind with Ubuntu.
I guess I just figure that a lot of "stable" software won't really have all the kinks ironed out until after release. When something is released, it's probably going to put onto hardware that no one was testing on, and it's probably going to be used in ways that it wasn't used during testing.
I agree that if there are known major bugs that will be extremely common, or bugs that are show-stoppers (e.g. cause significant data loss), then release should be pushed back. But if you want something extremely stable, then you might consider holding back your upgrade for a little while.
But I'm not making an argument from principle. I'm just saying that, from experience, I've never seen anyone get something 100% bug-free. Even Debian stable can have some quirks. So I'd rather have a regular release schedule than have progress on Ubuntu held back until every little bug can be worked out.
Meh... I wouldn't be surprised if I pissed someone off and they purposefully put me on spam lists somehow. Anyway, I'm not surprised that I'm getting flooded with spam, but I'm just saying that I know from experience that Gmail's filters don't get everything. I got about 20 spam messages that made it into my inbox just over the weekend.
Yes, but on the other hand, I've found Ubuntu to generally provide better hardware support than Vista. Also, while Windows tends to make you install drivers, more things seem to be supported in Linux without any user intervention.
So overall, I probably would say that Ubuntu offers very good hardware support.
I'm a bit split on this, I guess. It seems like they shouldn't release an unfinished product, but on the other hand I like that they actually stick to a 6-month release schedule.
I think I'd rather see them releasing every 6 months as best they can, and if during my testing I run across any showstopper bugs, I'll stick with an older version. After all, that older version will be (at most) 6 months old.
In my experience, incompetent systems administration can make anything work only "most of the time", regardless of how reliable it was designed to be.
In my experience, a lot of problems are caused by incompetent systems administration, but even more are caused by stupid defaults on software. Because often the "incompetent systems admins" will set up software and leave it in the default configuration.
So you're right that no system, however reliable, will stop stupid/malicious people from messing things up. However, a good system can prevent careless people from causing problems under normal circumstances.
The reason I'm pointing this out is everyone is so quick to blame problems on incompetent admins, saying, "Well of course they should have set up there server with [insert spam solution here]!" And then of course people are afraid to even ask how to implement said spam solution because you've just been told their incompetent morons for failing to already have it set up. After a little bit of searching the internet, they'll see other posts where people are saying, "I don't want to use [insert spam solution here] because it causes [insert problem here] and doesn't really work anyway!"
However, if e-mail software just came pre-installed with "proper settings" (whatever those proper settings are) or at least clear instructions on best practices, some of those "incompetent admins" would do a better job.
Just my 2 cents (as an incompetent admin).
Not me. I get endless spam in Japanese-- or at least I think it's Japanese-- and spanish. Loads of it, and I keep marking it as spam, and it keeps coming straight through Gmail's filters. In the past 6 months, I've started getting spam in English too, including phishing e-mails for E-Bay and PayPal.
Now, admittedly, my e-mail address is public on Slashdot, without obfuscation, so I'm pretty much asking for it. But don't tell me that their spam filters catch everything.
I feel like it's important to note that, most often, "hype" is not "just hype".
What I mean is, lots of things in life are over-hyped, but the hype usually comes from somewhere. There is something within the over-hyped thing that people are genuinely excited about, impressed with, or desirous of. They may have trouble explaining the true source of their excitement, but if you can find that source of excitement, you'll usually find something worthwhile.
So although Rails was over-hyped by some people, we may not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Most popular things are useless.
...and maybe it won't? Maybe the moon is made of cheese, but maybe it isn't! who's to say?! This isn't news, it's a conversation starter for people who enjoy arguing.Isn't that what we do here?
Right, and it's perfectly feasible to build a nuclear reactor small enough to integrate into a suit like that, powerful enough to meet the energy requirements, and safe enough to also put a man into the same suit?
For once, it looks to be at least within the realm of possible science...Oh, and none of the "I got bitten by a mutant spider/got exposed to gamma ray/etc" crap that is usually associated with american super-heroes.
Of course, there are somewhat realistic aspects of the suit, but there are still problems. Notably, how are you going to generate power, how do you make something that sleek-looking also structurally sound enough to pull off the stunts he pulls, and how are you going to actually fly that suit.
It's realistic in about the same way as the whole "I got hit with radiation, was mutated, and gained super powers." Sure, you could argue that it's scientific because radiation can mutate living cells. But that doesn't mean the whole thing is scientific.
In fact, current quality/bandwidth/multiplatform champion is Realvideo 10 and it is MPEG4 based too. Of course it is a bit hard to convince user to install it even while Real gives whole thing (except codecs) as open source. You know, history haunting.
I think part of the issue is that some of us just don't want to install another player. As a general policy, whether my own machine or some other machine I'm supporting, I don't want to install a single piece of software that I don't have to. Every piece of software is another thing to keep track of, another potential bug, security risk, software conflict, or other problem. I'd much rather use a single media player for the sake of simplicity and consistency. I'd rather install a codec than install a new player, and I'd rather not even have to install a new codec.
So yes, VP6 and VP7 produce good quality (I'd argue that Spark isn't so great). However, until they get better support in Quicktime, WMP, and FFMPEG, I'll view them as a PITA to deal with and "not worth the trouble".
If Journaling was on, there should not have been anyone 'manually copying to PST', it should have been automatic based on filters, it makes no sense.
Maybe we're talking about different features, or things have changed in Exchange 2007. I run Exchange 2003, and it provides an option make a copy of all messages that have been sent or received, and then store that copy in a specific user's mailbox. So I have a specific user on my server that receives a copy of every message that is sent or received by my Exchange server. I've seen this referred to as "journaling".
However, all that e-mail just sits in that mailbox on my server unless I do something with it. So it's not really "archived", it's just sitting on the Exchange server, taking up space in the mail store. What I gathered from the article was that the White House had applied this same technique, and when they wanted free up space for the mail store, they moved the files from that "journaling" mailbox to PST files, and they did that manually.
However, you can buy software that will automatically dump the contents of that mailbox into a real database (SQL server, for example), and then it also provides a web interface for searching through those files. This is a much safer (and smarter) solution than manually moving messages to a PST.
I think that's what they did. They turned on journaling, and then archived the journaling account to PST files.
Unfortunately, this meant that a person was manually copying to PST, which introduces an opportunity for either human error or tampering. In addition, PST files aren't very good for this sort of archive. They've long had a history of getting corrupt as they grow in size, they're hard to search, and they don't have much in the way of built-in security controls. It'd be better to dump the files into a DB that could then be accessed any number of ways.
I didn't get that from the summary, but this is one case where it really isn't Microsoft's fault. There are plenty of archiving systems built for Exchange, and some of them are really simple to install. Even if it weren't an ideal system, they could have gotten some kind of system up and running in a couple of hours, and it would be better than having people move messages into PST files.