We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion.
I think whoever wrote this grossly misunderstands the nature of language and human culture, as well as the nature of the Internet. Otherwise, problematic questions should immediately jump out right here, such as "Who decides what's a slur?" and "How can we tell if something is playing on a person's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion?" and "How would any of this be enforced?"
And metaphors? Really? We're not allowed to use metaphors anymore?
These rules suck. Oh, wait, I'm being dumb. When I used the word "suck" right there, the word is obliquely referring to oral sex, implying that only homosexuals perform oral sex, and by using the word "suck" as a negative, I'm implying that homosexuals are terrible.
Oh, but wait, I did it again! I used the word "dumb" to imply a lack of intellect, when really it means "to be mute, unable to speak." Therefore I'm implying that people who suffer the handicap of being unable to speak are mentally retarded. Crap, I used the word "retarded". You're not supposed to say "retarded" because it's offensive to call someone a "retard". Wait... and did I say "handicap"? That's super offensive now, isn't it?
And all this raises a different problematic question that I forgot to mention: What about humor? What about satire?
And hey, how about this: what about valid criticism? If I'm not supposed to use language that "plays on" someone's religion, for example, then am I not allowed to be critical of the actions taken by members of Westboro Baptist Church? Because maybe I have some fair criticisms. Maybe I have some fair criticisms of the roles that women play in our culture, or how our culture deals with homosexuals. But I'm not allowed to talk about that, because any kind of "language that plays on" those things is strictly forbidden.
Whoever wrote this seems to be intellectually deficient. I don't think this is a "play on" anything, since I'm not aware of who this person is. Am I still allowed to say negative things about people, so long as I don't know whether they're women?
I like the idea that they're putting forward, but I think it would be a mistake to try to explain this behavior with math like this without dealing with other constraints. For example:
As you can see, a clear tipping point is recognizable in which all lovers of small goats suddenly see that everyone is wearing Clarks, after which it takes a while for the lovers of small goats to all wear Timberlands. Until they notice that, and switch to something else, et cetera, until infinity.
So what they're saying, I think, is that there's Event A, which is people recognizing that everyone is wearing Clarks, followed by Event B, where 'hipsters' rebel by switching to the less popular brand of Timberlands. Because there's a delay between Event A and Event B, people have all switched to Timberlands, making it the new popular brand, before the 'hipsters' realize it and have time to react by choose a new kind of shoe.
However, it doesn't explain why everyone switched to Timberlands instead of various people switching to various other brands. Part of the issue must be some kind of market constraints, where there's some limits on which shoes people will realistically choose. More importantly, there is some level of social conformity going on in all of these groups. It's not clear to me who the 'hipsters' are, but I'm sure that among people adhering to the 'hipster' trends, there are some who are just following the crowd, as is normal. Part of the great irony of social movements that are superficially rebellious is that there must be a conformist aspect, or they wouldn't form a cohesive movement.
More to the point, it seems to me that a lot of the phenomenon of what people call 'hipsters' are actually very mainstream. The real 'hipsters' were the cool kids doing this stuff several years ago. Most people wouldn't see it enough to complain about 'hipsters' until it became common and mainstream enough that they see it in their normal daily lives.
Reminds me of the quote (apparently by P. J. O'Rourke):
The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
For some reason, I always remember it wrong. I keep thinking it's "The Republicans are the party that says government is full of idiots and then they get elected and prove it."
There is little difference between dial up and broadband internet access.
I'm not responding to the important points of your post, but there *is* an important difference between dial-up Internet and these broadband ISP: With dial-up ISPs, you could decouple your ISP from the telephone line that you connected through.
When I connected to an old dialup ISP years ago, I had a Verizon phone line. I could connect to any of the ISPs in my area over that physical phone line, and if I could have gotten another local phone provider, I could have connected to the same ISPs through the phone line for that other provider. With cable and FIOS, however, they are providing both the ISP service and the physical infrastructure that I use to connect to it.
In light of that, I think it should be clear that broadband Internet connections are even more in need of regulation than the previous dial-up connections. The service is essentially the same but faster, but the ISP has more control while the consumer has fewer options.
Residential broadband networks were never engineered as video delivery systems.
When Time Warner Cable is offering a 300mbps connection at their highest tier, and Verizon offering 500mbps, what do you think these ISPs are anticipating people will be downloading that warrants these kinds of speeds, if not video? And even if they are anticipating some other use (e.g. software downloads), do you imagine that these residential broadband networks were engineered to provide 300mbps downloads of software, but video still just presents too large of a problem?
And if these networks were not engineered to distribute video, why are these companies offering services to provide streaming HD video?
Settlement free peering (which is essentially what Netflix is demanding) has historically only been offered in instances where the traffic to be exchanged is roughly equal
I think this misses the point. Settlement free peering has been used in cases where peering is mutually beneficial to all companies involved. If the ISPs were providing a "dumb pipe" to the Internet, then it would be in their interest to provide high speed access to sources of content, and so this kind of peering would be mutually beneficial even if the traffic exchange was asymmetrical. However, the ISPs are serving as both "dumb pipes" and content providers, and so they have decided that it is to their benefit to prioritize access to their own content while degrading access to 3rd party content, and that's what this whole issue is really about.
Netflix has a history of trying to offload their costs onto third parties, be they ISPs, Tier 1 networks, CDNs, etc.
Could you provide some examples? I'm aware Netflix has tried to offload their bandwidth requirements, but I was under the impression that they were paying for CDN service. How did they get CDNs to work for them without paying?
They're a for profit company; one that I stopped doing business with
Eek. A for-profit company that you've stopped to business with? Those villains!
It may be "a move that is sure to generate controversy", but it's the right direction for things to be moving. The Internet is not an entertainment service or a toy. It's vital infrastructure that's necessary for our society to move forward economically and technologically, and it should be treated as such. Having crappy Internet should be considered as shameful as having crappy roads, run down train systems, beat up airports, and bridges that are falling down. Unfortunately, in the US, we seem to be fine with all of that.
That hasn't been my experience. These days, my Facebook feed seems to be filled with people posting Buzzfeed links to "20 sexy historical facts that will blow your mind!" or else it's a link that says "You won't believe what happens in this video!" without giving any explanation as to what's in the video.
In other words, it's mostly tedious, useless advertising for something or other.
What doesn't make sense to me is the synchronized motion part is really the trick here - that our brain will automatically figure out we're causing a sensation, even though the mechanics don't make sense or it's something we haven't experienced before.
I think I understand what they're trying to demonstrate, but the experiment is structured in a way that's not obvious. It starts from the idea that some people who have hallucinations of "ghosts" and other such things have damage in their brain, in an area that coordinates different sensations to determine cause. So it's like, if you were to flick yourself in the leg, you would feel one hand flicking, hear a brief "thud" noise from the impact, and feel an impact on your leg, and there's a part of your brain that would somehow collect all those things and go, "These were all the same event. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be concerned about."
So when they're synchronizing the motion that people are making to the motion of the robot, they're allowing that part of the brain to function normally. The test subject pokes their finger forward, and they get poked in the back. Their brain goes, "Oh, you did this to yourself somehow. Nothing to worry about."
But when they have the robot act on a delay, they're simulating what it would be like if that part of your brain was damaged. You're still in control of the robot, and so you're still poking yourself, but because it's on a delay, that part of your brain that coordinates those things goes, "Whoa, you did *not* do that. Something else is going on here." It's not that they literally believe there's a ghost poking them, but the point is that the experience is disturbing.
And because it is disturbing in a way that's similar to "ghost" or "alien" experiences that people have when that part of their brain is damaged, these researchers think that it explains what's going on with those experiences/hallucinations. The brain is failing to coordinate sensations, and so the brain is attributing experiences of motion/sensation to an alien force of some kind. ("alien force" not necessarily meaning space-aliens, but just "foreign to oneself")
It hands down beats the Ipad in lots of areas except for the apps.
I think this sort of thinking misses what has made Apple successful over the years. Techies keep worrying about whether a device beats another in terms of functionality, and meanwhile Apple focuses on usability. Yes, having a full desktop OS running on a tablet allows you to do more, but Windows 8 is a mess of an OS. Yes, Windows 8.1 improves the mess a bit, but it's still a mess.
At least, that's been my experience. Using Windows 8 on a desktop, I'm thinking, "Well it would be pretty good if they got rid of all this touch-interface crap. It's confusing and useless." Using Windows 8 on a tablet, I'm thinking, "The tablet UI could use a little work because it's a little too confusing. It's great that I can run desktop stuff, but for that stuff, I'd probably be better off with a laptop." Using an iPad? I'm probably not thinking much about the features and interface, because it's pretty clear what the device is, what it does, and how to use it.
I know I'm kind of picking this apart unnecessarily, but you say, "Has anyone seen any solution for this that actually works, or is this the Holy Grail of all IT?" Why would it be one or the other, and why would this possibly be the Holy Grail of all IT?
So now you're turning this into an argument about the particulars of the "bad things" he did. I'd like to point out that, in general, the people who are bringing this up are pro-Gates people saying (and I'm going to exaggerate to make a point), "Gee, look at how wonderful and amazing a person Bill Gates is. He's perfect and wonderful and lovely, and is the ideal human being. Not fair criticizing him! No fair saying anything bad or bringing up his past! We shouldn't even talk about what he did int he past because it's irrelevant, and also what he did in the past was not actually bad."
Not that last part at the end there is important. I don't really want to get into an argument about what he did in the past, but my point is that you are opening that door, which is important and meaningful for this other conversation we're having-- whether it's fair to bring up his past.
The thing is, in bringing up his past, you're belying the idea that his past has nothing to do with his present good deeds. You're presenting an implied argument that his present good deeds make him so immune to criticism-- not just to the point where we're supposed to ignore his past bad deeds, but so much so that we're supposed to revise history and pretend his bad deeds were actually totally fine. Any possible sins in his past can be summed up, "He only failed to be perfect, which is hardly a sin, and he's perfect now, so let's overlook that."
Right about now, you think I'm going too far and reading too far into things, but you misunderstand. I'm not saying this is your actual logical position on the argument, but I'm trying to verbalize the emotional/social position that's implied in your pseudo-logical argument. You're saying, "All he did was produce an inferior operating system," when, unless you're completely ignorant to the historical facts, that's not 'all he did'. But from your standpoint, we should all whitewash his past in order to sanctify him now.
it is a little unreasonable for people to jump in the middle of it to shout "Yeah but he did this bad thing 15 years ago!"
And I want to comment on this, also, and say that I don't think it's unreasonable. If you're going to praise a man for donating millions of dollars to charitable causes, then it's fair game to criticize him for how he got those millions of dollars.
Now we could argue about whether "that bad thing" he did 15 years ago was actually bad. I don't want to argue about that right now. But if without having done "that bad thing" he wouldn't have the millions of dollars to give to charity, then it's relevant to the conversation.
Gates is doing some good things with some of his money. You can take a minute to point that out, and we're free to use that minute however we see fit. I'm not looking to get into an argument about whether Gates is wonderful or terrible, but sorry, no, you don't get to tell all the rest of us that we have to worship the guy. Because ultimately we get to make up our own minds, and the fact that he has given some portion of his enormous money to charity does not make him immune to criticism.
How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?
I don't know the man personally, but I don't see why doing something good should remove anyone's right to have some level of "hate" for the man. Setting aside the particular example of Mr. Gates, does it seem fair to say,"[Person X] has done a good thing. Therefore, nobody can dislike him or object to anything else he does!"
How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?
I'm not sure why the those things should be connected, or how you can be so sure that Jobs "never gave a dime to charity". There's been at least a couple reports that Jobs did give money to charity, but didn't publicize the fact because he was very private.
But again, what does that have to do with anything? I'm sure there fans of Apple who are not huge fans of Jobs personally. I'm sure there are people who admire Jobs who also admire Gates. I'm sure there are Windows users who hate Gates.
How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?
Ok, I'll do this. I'm annoyed at Microsoft because they still haven't included support for non-Microsoft file-systems. Microsoft sucks!
Now what? Have I offended you by criticizing the company connected to The Great Gates?
t seems to me that if you're going to give a company a de facto monopoly of both television distribution and Internet, it would be a fair trade-off to require that they provide a very basic level of service to poor people for free. We can quibble over the details, but for example, providing the over-the-air channels and a 1mbps symmetrical connection seems fair.
These companies don't like to admit it, but they're providing exclusive access to public infrastructure. I think they should be counting their lucky stars that they're not as regulated as other utilities.
Maybe I'm unique in this regard, but as an admin, if something goes down on one of my servers, I want it to stay down until I intervene.
I'd want to have the option, but for the default behavior to be that it stays down. I feel like unfortunately, unless you've lived a charmed life where you only have to work with software that's high quality, you will probably run across some server running some piece of crap software that can be a bit crashy. Yes, I've run across software like that on Linux servers too. And personally, ideally, I like to have the easy ability to control what happens when something crashes. Should the server ignore the whole thing and keep chugging along? Should it attempt a restart? Should it wait 10 minutes, and then attempt a restart? If the attempted restart fails, should it make a second attempt? At what point should it notify me?
I like when I can have control over that kind of thing, if possible, and I'd like to have that control be easy and reliable.
Well no, he's right. It's just a tautology-- reliable servers don't crash. It's kind of like, "No daughter of mine is going to get pregnant out of wedlock!" I can say that as long as I'm willing to disown any that get pregnant out of wedlock. If she gets pregnant, then she's no longer my daughter.
So reliable servers don't just crash, but unfortunately a large percentage of the servers out there that, for one reason or another, aren't 100% reliable. I sure wish I had software that would work well on those.
The fundamental problem is that companies with a legally-granted monopoly for delivering high-speed internet are also allowed to sell content.
I agree with this part of your post, at least, and have been making the same argument for years. If the companies providing the infrastructure were not making money from selling content, and were only serving as "dumb pipes", then their business incentive would be in pushing customers toward higher-bandwidth (and therefore more expensive) connections. In that business model, companies that can provide content to saturate slow connections become very important, and so it seems likely that they would be falling all over themselves to provide a better connection to Netflix.
Instead, the Infrastructure providers have no incentive to increase content availability, because any piece of available content becomes competition for the content that they are trying to sell. That's a bad system. Unless you have an effective regulatory system, the ISPs will find ways to push towards a walled garden AOL-style internet, charging for access outside of the walled garden.
However, I don't think this is an example of "net neutrality" missing the mark. Net neutrality is a concept, and divorcing infrastructure providers from content providers is one way in which net neutrality could be promoted.
Still, honestly, this is the problem that I'd rather have. For me, I'd rather have the danger of the administrator of the computer making a stupid decision than to be forced into a walled garden.
And I'm not saying this as some kind of advocate of anything. I just control thousands of computers professionally, and I'm willing to take responsibility for which repository I connect to, rather than having to choose from only Microsoft-approved repositories.
Good to know. So I take it you're somewhat responsible for this? I love you then. As a systems/network admin, this has long been on my wishlist.
I wouldn't mind running my own repo for Windows patches, as long as there are tools to make it easy, including some way of automating pulling patches into my repo.
As far as integration with WSUS, I wouldn't mind seeing WSUS replaced/melded into a single solution, but I'm less interested in maintaining two different update solutions that plug into each other. Especially not if they have different behaviors and interfaces. Not that you asked, but I'd definitely prefer a single solution that can hold arbitrary 3rd party software, doesn't expect to be part of a larger Windows network security context (can easily be configured as a stand-alone server in "the cloud"), and is easily controllable on the client via powershell. Easy GUI tools for setting it up and maintaining the repo would be a bonus, but not vital.
I'm under the impression that this is not a new package format, and so you'd still have MSI files, but it's a method for automated download/installation of MSI files (and perhaps other files) based on a repository and install list.
I really respect this move from Microsoft. It's something they should have done a while ago, but better late than never. It has the potential to make administration much easier. They should also maintain their own repo of patches as an optional replacement for Windows Update.
Well I think the proper behavior for a journalist is to try to be aware of how ignorant they may be, and instead focus on reporting what they've been told by experts-- making it clear that they're reporting what they're being told by experts, and making it clear which expert told them which thing.
For journalists, it's not really their job to be experts. They're reporters, not philosophers. Sometimes they lose sight of that.
Slashdot Mirror
We can start by stating the obvious: It is never appropriate to use slurs, metaphors, graphic negative imagery, or any other kind of language that plays on someone's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion.
I think whoever wrote this grossly misunderstands the nature of language and human culture, as well as the nature of the Internet. Otherwise, problematic questions should immediately jump out right here, such as "Who decides what's a slur?" and "How can we tell if something is playing on a person's gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion?" and "How would any of this be enforced?"
And metaphors? Really? We're not allowed to use metaphors anymore?
These rules suck. Oh, wait, I'm being dumb. When I used the word "suck" right there, the word is obliquely referring to oral sex, implying that only homosexuals perform oral sex, and by using the word "suck" as a negative, I'm implying that homosexuals are terrible.
Oh, but wait, I did it again! I used the word "dumb" to imply a lack of intellect, when really it means "to be mute, unable to speak." Therefore I'm implying that people who suffer the handicap of being unable to speak are mentally retarded. Crap, I used the word "retarded". You're not supposed to say "retarded" because it's offensive to call someone a "retard". Wait... and did I say "handicap"? That's super offensive now, isn't it?
And all this raises a different problematic question that I forgot to mention: What about humor? What about satire?
And hey, how about this: what about valid criticism? If I'm not supposed to use language that "plays on" someone's religion, for example, then am I not allowed to be critical of the actions taken by members of Westboro Baptist Church? Because maybe I have some fair criticisms. Maybe I have some fair criticisms of the roles that women play in our culture, or how our culture deals with homosexuals. But I'm not allowed to talk about that, because any kind of "language that plays on" those things is strictly forbidden.
Whoever wrote this seems to be intellectually deficient. I don't think this is a "play on" anything, since I'm not aware of who this person is. Am I still allowed to say negative things about people, so long as I don't know whether they're women?
you worthless clown.
How dare you harass this fine online citizen because of his proud circus-performer American heritage. Whose side are you on?!
I like the idea that they're putting forward, but I think it would be a mistake to try to explain this behavior with math like this without dealing with other constraints. For example:
As you can see, a clear tipping point is recognizable in which all lovers of small goats suddenly see that everyone is wearing Clarks, after which it takes a while for the lovers of small goats to all wear Timberlands. Until they notice that, and switch to something else, et cetera, until infinity.
So what they're saying, I think, is that there's Event A, which is people recognizing that everyone is wearing Clarks, followed by Event B, where 'hipsters' rebel by switching to the less popular brand of Timberlands. Because there's a delay between Event A and Event B, people have all switched to Timberlands, making it the new popular brand, before the 'hipsters' realize it and have time to react by choose a new kind of shoe.
However, it doesn't explain why everyone switched to Timberlands instead of various people switching to various other brands. Part of the issue must be some kind of market constraints, where there's some limits on which shoes people will realistically choose. More importantly, there is some level of social conformity going on in all of these groups. It's not clear to me who the 'hipsters' are, but I'm sure that among people adhering to the 'hipster' trends, there are some who are just following the crowd, as is normal. Part of the great irony of social movements that are superficially rebellious is that there must be a conformist aspect, or they wouldn't form a cohesive movement.
More to the point, it seems to me that a lot of the phenomenon of what people call 'hipsters' are actually very mainstream. The real 'hipsters' were the cool kids doing this stuff several years ago. Most people wouldn't see it enough to complain about 'hipsters' until it became common and mainstream enough that they see it in their normal daily lives.
Reminds me of the quote (apparently by P. J. O'Rourke):
The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
For some reason, I always remember it wrong. I keep thinking it's "The Republicans are the party that says government is full of idiots and then they get elected and prove it."
There is little difference between dial up and broadband internet access.
I'm not responding to the important points of your post, but there *is* an important difference between dial-up Internet and these broadband ISP: With dial-up ISPs, you could decouple your ISP from the telephone line that you connected through.
When I connected to an old dialup ISP years ago, I had a Verizon phone line. I could connect to any of the ISPs in my area over that physical phone line, and if I could have gotten another local phone provider, I could have connected to the same ISPs through the phone line for that other provider. With cable and FIOS, however, they are providing both the ISP service and the physical infrastructure that I use to connect to it.
In light of that, I think it should be clear that broadband Internet connections are even more in need of regulation than the previous dial-up connections. The service is essentially the same but faster, but the ISP has more control while the consumer has fewer options.
Residential broadband networks were never engineered as video delivery systems.
When Time Warner Cable is offering a 300mbps connection at their highest tier, and Verizon offering 500mbps, what do you think these ISPs are anticipating people will be downloading that warrants these kinds of speeds, if not video? And even if they are anticipating some other use (e.g. software downloads), do you imagine that these residential broadband networks were engineered to provide 300mbps downloads of software, but video still just presents too large of a problem?
And if these networks were not engineered to distribute video, why are these companies offering services to provide streaming HD video?
Settlement free peering (which is essentially what Netflix is demanding) has historically only been offered in instances where the traffic to be exchanged is roughly equal
I think this misses the point. Settlement free peering has been used in cases where peering is mutually beneficial to all companies involved. If the ISPs were providing a "dumb pipe" to the Internet, then it would be in their interest to provide high speed access to sources of content, and so this kind of peering would be mutually beneficial even if the traffic exchange was asymmetrical. However, the ISPs are serving as both "dumb pipes" and content providers, and so they have decided that it is to their benefit to prioritize access to their own content while degrading access to 3rd party content, and that's what this whole issue is really about.
Netflix has a history of trying to offload their costs onto third parties, be they ISPs, Tier 1 networks, CDNs, etc.
Could you provide some examples? I'm aware Netflix has tried to offload their bandwidth requirements, but I was under the impression that they were paying for CDN service. How did they get CDNs to work for them without paying?
They're a for profit company; one that I stopped doing business with
Eek. A for-profit company that you've stopped to business with? Those villains!
It may be "a move that is sure to generate controversy", but it's the right direction for things to be moving. The Internet is not an entertainment service or a toy. It's vital infrastructure that's necessary for our society to move forward economically and technologically, and it should be treated as such. Having crappy Internet should be considered as shameful as having crappy roads, run down train systems, beat up airports, and bridges that are falling down. Unfortunately, in the US, we seem to be fine with all of that.
Facebook can't fix stupid, but it sure can encourage it!
That hasn't been my experience. These days, my Facebook feed seems to be filled with people posting Buzzfeed links to "20 sexy historical facts that will blow your mind!" or else it's a link that says "You won't believe what happens in this video!" without giving any explanation as to what's in the video.
In other words, it's mostly tedious, useless advertising for something or other.
What doesn't make sense to me is the synchronized motion part is really the trick here - that our brain will automatically figure out we're causing a sensation, even though the mechanics don't make sense or it's something we haven't experienced before.
I think I understand what they're trying to demonstrate, but the experiment is structured in a way that's not obvious. It starts from the idea that some people who have hallucinations of "ghosts" and other such things have damage in their brain, in an area that coordinates different sensations to determine cause. So it's like, if you were to flick yourself in the leg, you would feel one hand flicking, hear a brief "thud" noise from the impact, and feel an impact on your leg, and there's a part of your brain that would somehow collect all those things and go, "These were all the same event. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to be concerned about."
So when they're synchronizing the motion that people are making to the motion of the robot, they're allowing that part of the brain to function normally. The test subject pokes their finger forward, and they get poked in the back. Their brain goes, "Oh, you did this to yourself somehow. Nothing to worry about."
But when they have the robot act on a delay, they're simulating what it would be like if that part of your brain was damaged. You're still in control of the robot, and so you're still poking yourself, but because it's on a delay, that part of your brain that coordinates those things goes, "Whoa, you did *not* do that. Something else is going on here." It's not that they literally believe there's a ghost poking them, but the point is that the experience is disturbing.
And because it is disturbing in a way that's similar to "ghost" or "alien" experiences that people have when that part of their brain is damaged, these researchers think that it explains what's going on with those experiences/hallucinations. The brain is failing to coordinate sensations, and so the brain is attributing experiences of motion/sensation to an alien force of some kind. ("alien force" not necessarily meaning space-aliens, but just "foreign to oneself")
It hands down beats the Ipad in lots of areas except for the apps.
I think this sort of thinking misses what has made Apple successful over the years. Techies keep worrying about whether a device beats another in terms of functionality, and meanwhile Apple focuses on usability. Yes, having a full desktop OS running on a tablet allows you to do more, but Windows 8 is a mess of an OS. Yes, Windows 8.1 improves the mess a bit, but it's still a mess.
At least, that's been my experience. Using Windows 8 on a desktop, I'm thinking, "Well it would be pretty good if they got rid of all this touch-interface crap. It's confusing and useless." Using Windows 8 on a tablet, I'm thinking, "The tablet UI could use a little work because it's a little too confusing. It's great that I can run desktop stuff, but for that stuff, I'd probably be better off with a laptop." Using an iPad? I'm probably not thinking much about the features and interface, because it's pretty clear what the device is, what it does, and how to use it.
I know I'm kind of picking this apart unnecessarily, but you say, "Has anyone seen any solution for this that actually works, or is this the Holy Grail of all IT?" Why would it be one or the other, and why would this possibly be the Holy Grail of all IT?
So now you're turning this into an argument about the particulars of the "bad things" he did. I'd like to point out that, in general, the people who are bringing this up are pro-Gates people saying (and I'm going to exaggerate to make a point), "Gee, look at how wonderful and amazing a person Bill Gates is. He's perfect and wonderful and lovely, and is the ideal human being. Not fair criticizing him! No fair saying anything bad or bringing up his past! We shouldn't even talk about what he did int he past because it's irrelevant, and also what he did in the past was not actually bad."
Not that last part at the end there is important. I don't really want to get into an argument about what he did in the past, but my point is that you are opening that door, which is important and meaningful for this other conversation we're having-- whether it's fair to bring up his past.
The thing is, in bringing up his past, you're belying the idea that his past has nothing to do with his present good deeds. You're presenting an implied argument that his present good deeds make him so immune to criticism-- not just to the point where we're supposed to ignore his past bad deeds, but so much so that we're supposed to revise history and pretend his bad deeds were actually totally fine. Any possible sins in his past can be summed up, "He only failed to be perfect, which is hardly a sin, and he's perfect now, so let's overlook that."
Right about now, you think I'm going too far and reading too far into things, but you misunderstand. I'm not saying this is your actual logical position on the argument, but I'm trying to verbalize the emotional/social position that's implied in your pseudo-logical argument. You're saying, "All he did was produce an inferior operating system," when, unless you're completely ignorant to the historical facts, that's not 'all he did'. But from your standpoint, we should all whitewash his past in order to sanctify him now.
And frankly, I think that's what he intends.
it is a little unreasonable for people to jump in the middle of it to shout "Yeah but he did this bad thing 15 years ago!"
And I want to comment on this, also, and say that I don't think it's unreasonable. If you're going to praise a man for donating millions of dollars to charitable causes, then it's fair game to criticize him for how he got those millions of dollars.
Now we could argue about whether "that bad thing" he did 15 years ago was actually bad. I don't want to argue about that right now. But if without having done "that bad thing" he wouldn't have the millions of dollars to give to charity, then it's relevant to the conversation.
Gates is doing some good things with some of his money. You can take a minute to point that out, and we're free to use that minute however we see fit. I'm not looking to get into an argument about whether Gates is wonderful or terrible, but sorry, no, you don't get to tell all the rest of us that we have to worship the guy. Because ultimately we get to make up our own minds, and the fact that he has given some portion of his enormous money to charity does not make him immune to criticism.
How many posts until someone finds a way to still hate on him, despite the fact that he's done more for the poor than all of us put together?
I don't know the man personally, but I don't see why doing something good should remove anyone's right to have some level of "hate" for the man. Setting aside the particular example of Mr. Gates, does it seem fair to say,"[Person X] has done a good thing. Therefore, nobody can dislike him or object to anything else he does!"
How many Apple fans will make fun of him, in spite of the fact that Steve Jobs never gave a dime to charity?
I'm not sure why the those things should be connected, or how you can be so sure that Jobs "never gave a dime to charity". There's been at least a couple reports that Jobs did give money to charity, but didn't publicize the fact because he was very private.
But again, what does that have to do with anything? I'm sure there fans of Apple who are not huge fans of Jobs personally. I'm sure there are people who admire Jobs who also admire Gates. I'm sure there are Windows users who hate Gates.
How many of you will take a potshot at Microsoft, even though Bill hasn't worked there in years?
Ok, I'll do this. I'm annoyed at Microsoft because they still haven't included support for non-Microsoft file-systems. Microsoft sucks!
Now what? Have I offended you by criticizing the company connected to The Great Gates?
t seems to me that if you're going to give a company a de facto monopoly of both television distribution and Internet, it would be a fair trade-off to require that they provide a very basic level of service to poor people for free. We can quibble over the details, but for example, providing the over-the-air channels and a 1mbps symmetrical connection seems fair.
These companies don't like to admit it, but they're providing exclusive access to public infrastructure. I think they should be counting their lucky stars that they're not as regulated as other utilities.
Maybe I'm unique in this regard, but as an admin, if something goes down on one of my servers, I want it to stay down until I intervene.
I'd want to have the option, but for the default behavior to be that it stays down. I feel like unfortunately, unless you've lived a charmed life where you only have to work with software that's high quality, you will probably run across some server running some piece of crap software that can be a bit crashy. Yes, I've run across software like that on Linux servers too. And personally, ideally, I like to have the easy ability to control what happens when something crashes. Should the server ignore the whole thing and keep chugging along? Should it attempt a restart? Should it wait 10 minutes, and then attempt a restart? If the attempted restart fails, should it make a second attempt? At what point should it notify me?
I like when I can have control over that kind of thing, if possible, and I'd like to have that control be easy and reliable.
Well no, he's right. It's just a tautology-- reliable servers don't crash. It's kind of like, "No daughter of mine is going to get pregnant out of wedlock!" I can say that as long as I'm willing to disown any that get pregnant out of wedlock. If she gets pregnant, then she's no longer my daughter.
So reliable servers don't just crash, but unfortunately a large percentage of the servers out there that, for one reason or another, aren't 100% reliable. I sure wish I had software that would work well on those.
The fundamental problem is that companies with a legally-granted monopoly for delivering high-speed internet are also allowed to sell content.
I agree with this part of your post, at least, and have been making the same argument for years. If the companies providing the infrastructure were not making money from selling content, and were only serving as "dumb pipes", then their business incentive would be in pushing customers toward higher-bandwidth (and therefore more expensive) connections. In that business model, companies that can provide content to saturate slow connections become very important, and so it seems likely that they would be falling all over themselves to provide a better connection to Netflix.
Instead, the Infrastructure providers have no incentive to increase content availability, because any piece of available content becomes competition for the content that they are trying to sell. That's a bad system. Unless you have an effective regulatory system, the ISPs will find ways to push towards a walled garden AOL-style internet, charging for access outside of the walled garden.
However, I don't think this is an example of "net neutrality" missing the mark. Net neutrality is a concept, and divorcing infrastructure providers from content providers is one way in which net neutrality could be promoted.
Still, honestly, this is the problem that I'd rather have. For me, I'd rather have the danger of the administrator of the computer making a stupid decision than to be forced into a walled garden.
And I'm not saying this as some kind of advocate of anything. I just control thousands of computers professionally, and I'm willing to take responsibility for which repository I connect to, rather than having to choose from only Microsoft-approved repositories.
Good to know. So I take it you're somewhat responsible for this? I love you then. As a systems/network admin, this has long been on my wishlist.
I wouldn't mind running my own repo for Windows patches, as long as there are tools to make it easy, including some way of automating pulling patches into my repo.
As far as integration with WSUS, I wouldn't mind seeing WSUS replaced/melded into a single solution, but I'm less interested in maintaining two different update solutions that plug into each other. Especially not if they have different behaviors and interfaces. Not that you asked, but I'd definitely prefer a single solution that can hold arbitrary 3rd party software, doesn't expect to be part of a larger Windows network security context (can easily be configured as a stand-alone server in "the cloud"), and is easily controllable on the client via powershell. Easy GUI tools for setting it up and maintaining the repo would be a bonus, but not vital.
I look forward to seeing what this turns into.
I'm under the impression that this is not a new package format, and so you'd still have MSI files, but it's a method for automated download/installation of MSI files (and perhaps other files) based on a repository and install list.
I really respect this move from Microsoft. It's something they should have done a while ago, but better late than never. It has the potential to make administration much easier. They should also maintain their own repo of patches as an optional replacement for Windows Update.
Well I think the proper behavior for a journalist is to try to be aware of how ignorant they may be, and instead focus on reporting what they've been told by experts-- making it clear that they're reporting what they're being told by experts, and making it clear which expert told them which thing.
For journalists, it's not really their job to be experts. They're reporters, not philosophers. Sometimes they lose sight of that.