I think the grandparent is saying that you can run a 32-bit OS on these processors, not that you are unable to do otherwise -- that is, the problem the original post describes comes not from the processor, but from the 64-bit OS which can and does run on that processor.
I agree that it's easy for users to become inured to entering their password, but running as a normal user rather than admin gives a small extra layer of protection (the pseudo-privilege escalation described here can't happen) at almost no extra cost (one has to enter a name as well as a password at the authentication dialogues -- which would, or should, appear anyway even if were running as an administrator).
Some application authors think users are too dim to be trusted with copying the file themselves, so will set up a package whose sole function is automatically to move the application to/Applications. Naturally, this is wonderful for those of us who like to sort our applications into our own folders. Even if some library files need to be installed, they can often be put (if the user wants) in ~/Library instead of/Library; but Installer.app doesn't allow this.
Darwinports -- which does need, or want, to write to/opt/local -- offers a package, but also provides a way for users to do the install 'manually'. I can't remember what they were off the top of my head, but I've had to deal with applications which weren't so nice -- that's why there's unpkg. Anyway, the point is that some authors make packages even if they don't need to do so.
Why is it an issue? If you are on your personal machine, who else but you should be the administrator?
The point is not that someone else should be, but that no regularly logged-in user should be. With no exceptions of which I know, you can do everything on a Mac running from a normal account. If you need to sudo something, you will be presented with a dialogue which in one stroke allows you to su to an administrator, then sudo from that administrator account. (At least, that's how I assume it works.) The only difference from being an administrator is that you have to explicitly enter an administrator's name at that dialogue, as well as the password.
Now about once or twice a year, I find some situation where it is simpler to be in a GUI desktop as the sudo user. (one of those is fink-commander)
By 'the sudo user' I assume you mean 'a sudoer' (i.e., by default, an administrator). Why do you need to be an administrator for Fink Commander? It prompts you for a sudoer's name and password just like any other application. For self-repair, you might need to enter the password twice; but I run it just fine as an ordinary user.
The parent's point wasn't that any particular operating system was supported, but rather that any current form of DRM prevents one from being properly platform-agnostic. Adding another platform to the list doesn't change this. (To be fair, I don't know what would, short of no DRM -- but that was, after all, what the parent was saying.) Your first suggestion doesn't, but, tragically for snarking, your second suggestion does, address the additional concern of finding yourself orphaned with copy-able multi-platform-supported files whose playback requires support from a company which no longer exists.
That's funny -- I'm running XP Home in a Limited User account right now. Are you sure about that?
What I meant is that the options for limiting privileges are very, well, limited -- you can run with very few privileges, or with all privileges, but not something in between. But, now that you ask, no, I'm not sure about that.
Can anyone explain if this rootkit prompts for a password when installing (during the autorun, I presume)
Under Windows, when you're logged in as the administrator, you don't need any further password to proceed with, say, installing a rootkit. If you're a Home user, you can't give limited privileges, so you have no option, for the vast majority of crappily-written software, but to install it as an administrator (albeit with Spybot S&D and StartupMonitor running in the background to catch the seventeen start-up items it thinks you now need).
Why is it that I can work twice as fast in VI (ancient unix editor) and work without concern of formatting (and still have beautifully formatted documents), and use math symbols and other non-keyboard symbols with great ease (ie, not going through a menu/toolbar everytime I want one).
Amen to this. There is a flood of posts after yours telling you that you're wrong, but I couldn't agree more. I agree there's a little learning curve to using vi, but, once you get used to it, it makes things so much easier simply by stripping away all the fancy dressing. Want to write a math document? Worry about what it says, not about fancy formatting (vi won't let you) or text layout (TeX won't let you). If only there were an additional program that would fill in the math for me, too.
I question the intelligence of rejecting reasonably functional software just because the interface, or the look and feel, or the widgets aren't your idea of perfection. Seems like narrow-mindedness of the first order, especially regarding something as subjective as UI.
This seems like a dangerous discussion with which to get involved, but, though I agree with the comment in your post that this kind of over-specificity amounts to nitpicking, surely this paragraph goes too far. Just as lav-chan shouldn't get to decide that certain human-interface practices which he (or she) doesn't like -- such as themes -- aren't included, surely it's none of our business whether lav-chan uses, or does not use, any software, for any reason whatsoever? There's lots of perfectly functional software out there, much of which I don't use for reasons which wouldn't stand up to any investigation. As long as I pick out one piece of functional software for my purposes (or even if I don't), who cares what flimsy excuse I might have for rejecting another one?
What is the need for the lock to know your credit card number? (unless they are used for things you purchase in the hotel)
I don't even believe that this parenthesis provides a legitimate exception. If the card is to be used to purchase things in a hotel, let it carry some kind of pointer to your account with the hotel. Since your account with the hotel includes your credit card information, that's all that should be needed.
And they DO erase them after you check out, don't they?
Although this seems suspicious to me (it's hard to believe that as highly-motivated a work force as the desk personnel at a hotel won't slip up and forget from time to time), I guess it's true that the keys are then kept in a reasonably safe place until they are re-encoded for the next visitor. (Is this true? Is there a way to recover old information from a magnetic stripe even after it's been overwritten?)
SessionSaver, mentioned by FhnuZoag, does (among other things) exactly what you want. (Choose `I'd like my browser restored [x] every startup, from: [my last session].')
An AC mentioned that Firefox `has the power to emulate what [anything else] innovates', which sounded sarcastic, but is to me one of the big selling points. Have something you like from another browser? Come on over to Firefox, where it'll do that and more. That is, Firefox can be all the best bits of every browser, after a little browsing on UMO or The Extensions Room (my favourite). I don't know of any other browser which supports this level of customisability (although I'm sure I'll be informed soon if there are any).
Surely you don't mean that seriously. If you're going to tamper intentionally with votes, delivering a 100% victory to the candidate you're rooting for is considerably more obvious than delivering a close race. (Incidentally, why Maryland? There were plenty of states that Kerry won.)
If this guy had anything of substance to say, he'd have written to a more credible/influential outlet than "a somewhat shrill political blogger".
Since `shrill' (especially `somewhat shrill') is a matter of personal taste (there are those, though I hope not here, who consider Ann Coulter a voice of reason), it is presumably to `political blogger' that you object -- but, really, what quicker and more reliable way is there to disseminate information than through such a medium? As long as it gets read, the purpose of this sort of announcement is served.
If I buy a CD, and it becomes lost or damaged before I can make a copy, does it constitute a fair use for me to copy the same disc from my friend, or download the same songs to replace the ones that I paid for? Thoughts?
Two illegal activities in one post!
1. Inciting illegal music copying via hypothetical questions.
2. Inciting thought.
This solution is interesting, but surely not scaleable -- while captchas are, by design, easy for computers to generate but hard for them to solve, the same thing that prevents computers from solving `easy' problems will presumably also prevent them from generating `easy' problems.
It is rather disimiliar to encryption. It is just noisy input. lots of signal detection, and standard ocr practices can be used.
Cryptographic ideas appear in the analysis of ancient languages (such as Linear B) all the time. Just because the techniques that prevent a computer from accessing the data aren't recognisable as `codes' in the familiar sense doesn't mean that what's happening isn't encryption; in fact the result is a `cryptogram' in the most literal sense, namely, `hidden writing'.
How about a search for mortgage on Google. Hmmm, this looks familiar. The two top results seem to be sponsored links instead of real results. Does "this [infer] that commerce puts people above the law"" on Google?
You can infer what you want, but what a person (or collection of search results) does obliquely to suggest something is to imply it. In this case, `suggest' is probably the better word anyway. (I reply to you rather than to the parent because he was clearly suffering from some very frothy version of rabies, and you obviously noted the word carefully enough to change its number.)
Every review is a rave, and even the worst products have an average of three out of five stars (or golden eggs or whatever, it doesn't matter).
I think reviewers who want to sneak in a negative review will often just give the product five stars. These reviews (where the text doesn't match the rating) don't seem to get flagged, and they're often the only way to hear the downside of a Newegg product.
Slashdot Mirror
I think the grandparent is saying that you can run a 32-bit OS on these processors, not that you are unable to do otherwise -- that is, the problem the original post describes comes not from the processor, but from the 64-bit OS which can and does run on that processor.
As a Mac user who wants to convert to OGG, I was very happy to discover Max. It uses (or can be made to use) cdparanoia as its ripper.
I agree that it's easy for users to become inured to entering their password, but running as a normal user rather than admin gives a small extra layer of protection (the pseudo-privilege escalation described here can't happen) at almost no extra cost (one has to enter a name as well as a password at the authentication dialogues -- which would, or should, appear anyway even if were running as an administrator).
Darwinports -- which does need, or want, to write to /opt/local -- offers a package, but also provides a way for users to do the install 'manually'. I can't remember what they were off the top of my head, but I've had to deal with applications which weren't so nice -- that's why there's unpkg. Anyway, the point is that some authors make packages even if they don't need to do so.
By 'the sudo user' I assume you mean 'a sudoer' (i.e., by default, an administrator). Why do you need to be an administrator for Fink Commander? It prompts you for a sudoer's name and password just like any other application. For self-repair, you might need to enter the password twice; but I run it just fine as an ordinary user.
The parent's point wasn't that any particular operating system was supported, but rather that any current form of DRM prevents one from being properly platform-agnostic. Adding another platform to the list doesn't change this. (To be fair, I don't know what would, short of no DRM -- but that was, after all, what the parent was saying.) Your first suggestion doesn't, but, tragically for snarking, your second suggestion does, address the additional concern of finding yourself orphaned with copy-able multi-platform-supported files whose playback requires support from a company which no longer exists.
If, of the first 100 pages,
93 are ads;
4 are glowing reviews; and
the remaining 2 are the table of contents,
then maybe you missed the 1 secret page that points you to interesting content.
I don't even believe that this parenthesis provides a legitimate exception. If the card is to be used to purchase things in a hotel, let it carry some kind of pointer to your account with the hotel. Since your account with the hotel includes your credit card information, that's all that should be needed.
An AC mentioned that Firefox `has the power to emulate what [anything else] innovates', which sounded sarcastic, but is to me one of the big selling points. Have something you like from another browser? Come on over to Firefox, where it'll do that and more. That is, Firefox can be all the best bits of every browser, after a little browsing on UMO or The Extensions Room (my favourite). I don't know of any other browser which supports this level of customisability (although I'm sure I'll be informed soon if there are any).
Surely you don't mean that seriously. If you're going to tamper intentionally with votes, delivering a 100% victory to the candidate you're rooting for is considerably more obvious than delivering a close race. (Incidentally, why Maryland? There were plenty of states that Kerry won.)
1. Inciting illegal music copying via hypothetical questions.
2. Inciting thought.
This solution is interesting, but surely not scaleable -- while captchas are, by design, easy for computers to generate but hard for them to solve, the same thing that prevents computers from solving `easy' problems will presumably also prevent them from generating `easy' problems.
Cryptographic ideas appear in the analysis of ancient languages (such as Linear B) all the time. Just because the techniques that prevent a computer from accessing the data aren't recognisable as `codes' in the familiar sense doesn't mean that what's happening isn't encryption; in fact the result is a `cryptogram' in the most literal sense, namely, `hidden writing'.
Does anyone else picture Robert Redford as the wise and sagacious Car Whisperer?